01505
1 MANITOBA CLEAN ENVIRONMENT COMMISSION
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7 RED RIVER FLOODWAY EXPANSION PROJECT
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12 =======================================
13 WEDNESDAY, February 23, 2005
14 Oakbank United Church
15 Oakbank, Manitoba
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18 Volume 7
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01506
1 APPEARANCES:
2 Clean Environment Commission:
3 Mr. Terry Sargeant - Chairman
Mr. Barrie Webster - Member
4 Mr. Wayne Motheral - Member
Mr. Doug Abra - Counsel
5 Mr. Dave Farlinger - Technical consultant
Ms. Cathy Johnson - Secretary to Commission
6 Ms. Joyce Mueller - Secretary
7 Manitoba Conservation:
8 Mr. Trent Hreno - Chair, Project Admin Team
Mr. Bruce Webb - Chair, Tech Advisory
9 Committee
Mr. Stewart Pierce - Counsel
10
11 Manitoba Floodway Authority:
12 Mr. Rick Handlon - Counsel
Mr. Jim Thomson
13 Mr. Doug McNeil
Mr. Doug Peterson
14 Mr. Cam Osler - Intergroup Consulting
Mr. John Osler - Intergroup Consulting
15 Mr. David Morgan - TetrES Consulting
Mr. George Rempel - TetrES Consulting
16 Mr. Robert Sinclair - KGS
Ms. Marci Friedman-Hamm - KGS
17
18 Participants:
19 Mr. Bob Starr - Ritchot Concerned Citizens
Mr. Bob Bodnaruk - RM of Springfield
20 Mr. Steve Strang - RM of St. Clements
Mr. Orvel Currie - Counsel to Municipalities
21 Mr. Doug Chorney - Coalition for Flood
Protection North
22 Mr. Kerry McLuhan - Coalition for Flood
Protection North
23 Mr. Rob Loudfoot - 768 Association
Mr. Y. Shumuk - 768 Association
24 Paul Clifton - Paul Clifton
Mr. Jeff Frank - Rivers West
25 Gaile Whelan Enns - Manitoba Wildlands
Earl Stevenson - Peguis Indian Band
01507
1 Participants: (continued)
2
3 Mr. Jake Buhler - Cooks Creek Conservation
Mr. Lloyd Crooks - Cooks Creek Conservation
4 Mr. Jon Stefanson - Cooks Creek Conservation
Mr. Daryl Chicoine - Counsel
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01508
1 INDEX OF PROCEEDINGS
2 Presentation by Municipalities
(Wayne Clifton) 1514
3
Cross-examination of Municipalities
4 (Wayne Clifton)
Cross-examination by MFA 1562
5 Questions by Panel 1649
6 Evening Presentations:
7 Mr. Bob Galoway 1673
Mr. Karl Pohl 1675
8 Mr. Myron Gavaga 1687
Mr. David Grant 1694
9 Mr. Hugh Arklie 1704
Mr. Bob Bodnaruk 1710
10 Mr. Randy Znamirowski 1728
Mr. Norman Traverse 1737
11 Mr. Bruce Allen 1740
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01509
1 INDEX OF EXHIBITS
2 60 Presentation of Mr. Wayne Clifton 1562
3 61 Karl Pohl's presentation to the 1686
Clean Environment Commission
4
5 62 Letter from Mr. Galoway 1727
6
63 Mr. Grant's presentation 1728
7
8 64 Mr. Bodnaruk's presentation 1728
9
65 Mr. Arklie's presentation 1749
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11 66 Mr. Znamirowski's presentation 1749
12 67 Mr. Traverse's presentation 1749
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25
01510
1 INDEX OF UNDERTAKINGS
2 UNDERTAKING NO. PAGE
3
4
5 2 Provided by Wayne Clifton - Provide 1624
working papers re hydraulic
6 conductivity, boundary conditions,
calibration points, calibration,
7 sensitivity, and floodway staging)
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9
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01511
1 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2005
2 UPON COMMENCING AT 1:00 P.M.
3
4 THE CHAIRMAN: Could we come to order,
5 please. Order please. Welcome back. We are
6 ready to proceed with today's proceedings.
7 First on the agenda today is a
8 response to an undertaking by Mr. John Osler on
9 behalf of the Floodway Authority. Mr. Osler?
10 MR. J. OSLER: Good afternoon. I had
11 an undertaking coming from page 1153, lines two to
12 six of the transcript, in which Mr. Stinson
13 requests.
14 "Could the breaches in the aquifer be
15 sealed prior to continuing on with the
16 expansion of the floodway?"
17 Acknowledge those are the general terms and they
18 are not verbatim. And the discussion was could we
19 find the exact quote.
20 We went back and took a look at the
21 meetings notes that came out of rounds one, two
22 and three, could not find a direct reference to
23 that particular quote, although I direct the
24 Commission and others to the round three issues
25 identification summary that's found on page 3D,
01512
1 that's appendix 3D, 156 and 157 of the EIS filing,
2 where there were three particular references. And
3 that's issue number 9.16.200, and they materialize
4 in the round three identification summary as
5 issues 300, 301 and 324, which were all issues
6 raised about groundwater quality and groundwater
7 intrusion.
8 Mr. Stinson also provided the EA study
9 team with two sets of questions on March 5, 2004,
10 and also on March 22, 2004, in which he talks
11 about the potential for breaching in the floodway
12 channel.
13 The important point here is that
14 Mr. Stinson's involvement in the process, and
15 others like him, helped to identify the issues
16 early in the process, and subsequently they were
17 able to be integrated in the project design phase.
18 And as we talked about at some time over the last
19 couple of weeks, the key issue here is that the
20 design of the channel itself was altered to
21 accommodate this and other concerns related to
22 groundwater.
23 I believe that completes that part of
24 the undertaking. If there is any further
25 questions from the Commission or Mr. Stinson, I
01513
1 would be welcome to entertain them.
2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Osler.
3 We will now turn to the main item of
4 business for this afternoon, and that is further
5 presentation on behalf of the Coalition for Flood
6 Protection North of the Floodway, and I would turn
7 it over to Mr. Currie, ask him to introduce his
8 colleague, and then we will have Mr. Clifton sworn
9 in.
10 MR. CURRIE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
11 I guess I would just like to make it clear on the
12 record that this is really the portion of the
13 three RMs presentation. The last was in fact ours
14 as well, but I'm not sure whether the Coalition
15 will adopt everything we say. We hope they would.
16 THE CHAIRMAN: I stand corrected yet
17 again.
18 MR. CURRIE: I don't mean it that way,
19 but just for the record.
20 THE CHAIRMAN: I can't keep it
21 straight between the Coalition and -- maybe I
22 should just give credit to everybody.
23 MR. CURRIE: The group, okay.
24 THE CHAIRMAN: The northern group.
25 MR. CURRIE: With that, what I would
01514
1 do then, Mr. Chairman, is ask that Mr. Clifton
2 briefly introduce himself to the Commission and
3 the members of the audience and the MFA.
4 MR. CLIFTON: Good afternoon,
5 Mr. Chair, members of the Commission, and good
6 afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
7 My name is Wayne Clifton,
8 C-L-I-F-T-O-N. I'm a civil engineer with a fairly
9 diverse past and training. My undergraduate
10 degree is in civil engineering. My initial work
11 experience was in the transportation area. My
12 post graduate training was in, initially in
13 highway transportation and materials, and
14 subsequent post graduate work was in engineering
15 geology, geotechnical engineering.
16 My work history, my career, initially
17 was in the civil engineering construction,
18 principally related to highways and bridges. But
19 with the onset of the second generation of uranium
20 industry and the new mining regulations, and new
21 environmental regulations in Saskatchewan in the
22 late 1960s, I became one of the early
23 practitioners addressing the issues related to
24 environmental management of the uranium industry,
25 dealing with some of the most toxic substances
01515
1 that we know in our industrial society, in an area
2 of principally fractured rock and pristine
3 groundwater conditions.
4 In the early 1970s we had very few
5 tools to deal with these issues, and I started
6 what turned out to be a 30-year collaboration with
7 my colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan in
8 working on developing tools to address the
9 analysis of environmental impacts, principally on
10 the groundwater system, and have worked in that
11 area for 30 odd years.
12 During that career I have worked both
13 as a principal investigator, as a manager of
14 impact assessment, as a technical advisor to
15 federal panels, a technical advisor to governments
16 on evaluation of issues related to protection of
17 groundwater and surface water systems, many of
18 them in very sensitive socio-economic conditions
19 where they are areas of great public concern.
20 So that's a very brief background of
21 my own history.
22 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Clifton.
23 I will ask the Commission secretary to swear you
24 in please.
25 (WAYNE CLIFTON: SWORN)
01516
1 THE CHAIRMAN: You may proceed, sir.
2 MR. CLIFTON: Thank you. My
3 presentation relates to the groundwater concerns
4 of the rural municipalities of St. Clements, East
5 St. Paul and Springfield. I was contacted by the
6 RM of Springfield on behalf of the three
7 municipalities in the late fall of 2004, and had
8 early discussions with them regarding the
9 environmental impact assessment of the floodway
10 expansion.
11 My mandate, put in simple terms, was
12 really to review the documents and to assess
13 whether the interests of the three municipalities
14 were adequately reflected in the considerations
15 published within the documents.
16 My presentation this afternoon
17 records, or outlines my conclusions which were
18 previously communicated in a brief written report
19 that was submitted to Mr. Currie. So with that, I
20 will commence with my presentation.
21 The opinions that are expressed in
22 this presentation are mine. They are based on
23 documentation provided to the intervenors up until
24 mid January, thereabouts, in 2005. But the
25 presentation that I'm going to give you does not
01517
1 incorporate all of the changes necessarily that
2 have been verbally indicated during the hearings.
3 I have only attended the hearings over the last
4 several days, so I'm perhaps not fully conversant
5 with the changes that have taken place. But with
6 that caveat, the deficiencies are mine, and I'm
7 not in any way saying to the proponent that I
8 disagree with them. As a matter of fact, far from
9 that, I congratulate the proponent on getting a
10 very complex and difficult project to this point
11 in very, very short -- in a very, very short time
12 frame. I have some knowledge of the degree of
13 difficulty involved and I salute them for their
14 achievements. It has been a lot of work in a very
15 short time.
16 Now, what I will point out is perhaps
17 some areas where we have some differences of
18 opinion in some of the conclusions reached, and of
19 course, that's what we are here to discuss today.
20 The summary of concerns are centred
21 around the overview of the groundwater resource
22 and they focus on specific issues related to
23 conservation, management, monitoring, many of them
24 centred around the interpretation of the CEAA
25 requirements, particularly with respect to
01518
1 application of the cumulative effects assessment.
2 We will end, or I will end with some
3 recommended conditions of approval. And in
4 summary, just to summarize, that the
5 municipalities are recommending approval of the
6 project. But they are recommending approval of
7 the project and seeking the intervention of the
8 Commissioners with some specific conditions of
9 approval that will leave the municipalities whole
10 with respect to their interests and the interests
11 of their residents in the groundwater resource.
12 So in summary, we have concerns, we
13 recommend approval, but we are seeking specific
14 conditions to address those concerns.
15 Some of the concerns relate to who is
16 the proponent, and the fact that the proponent,
17 there may be multiple proponents here. We will
18 talk about the assessment methodology and about
19 the ongoing uncontrolled discharge of very
20 valuable, very high quality water which is
21 impacting the region's future; the fact that the
22 authority and its successors must become a
23 responsible manager of the groundwater resource,
24 that the impact, while it is portrayed as site
25 based or at best local in our estimation is much
01519
1 more extensive than that. While, again, while it
2 is portrayed as being construction related only,
3 we believe again that it has much longer term
4 effects than that. And that centres particularly
5 around the cumulative effects assessment which we
6 believe is not accurately interpreted. The
7 ongoing, the ongoing contamination of the aquifer
8 that is there is not being addressed to our way of
9 thinking. Commitment to transparent community
10 based monitoring program, arms length dispute
11 resolution, and as I said before, conditions of
12 approval.
13 So that, Mr. Chairman, is a fairly
14 broad menu, but I will try to briefly describe
15 those. I think the concerns are elaborated to a
16 greater extent in the written submission that was
17 provided earlier.
18 Who is the proponent? Well, in the
19 documents provided, the Expansion Authority is the
20 proponent for licensing, design and construction,
21 and the Stewardship department for operations. I
22 simply draw that to the attention of the
23 Commission, that it is important that the
24 conditions of approval also apply to the operator.
25 Conditions of approval for design and construction
01520
1 should endure and survive through to the
2 operations of the facility. And I won't say
3 anything further about that, but I will address
4 the issue of impact assessment, of the
5 methodology. And this has been in front of the
6 Commission several times, including while I have
7 been in the audience, and I will be brief.
8 The impacts assessed according to
9 duration, less than five years is short term,
10 greater than five years is long term. That's
11 important because five years is essentially the
12 construction period for the facility. They are
13 assessed according to magnitude, and the magnitude
14 definition is clear. Small, there is no
15 measurable effect. Moderate, impact is an effect
16 that could be detected with a well designed
17 monitoring system. And I would underline that for
18 the Commissioners. That's an important
19 consequence, because it can only -- the moderate
20 effects can only be detected if there is a
21 comprehensive, well designed, representative
22 monitoring system that gathers information from
23 before construction, through into the long term
24 during operations. Very important aspect. Large
25 impacts are those that are readily detectible
01521
1 without monitoring. If my well goes dry, to me,
2 that's an obvious large impact. And those scalers
3 are very clear in the EIS.
4 There is impacts assessed according to
5 geographic extent, and they are site local and
6 regional. The site impact is within the
7 right-of-way. If it extends beyond the
8 right-of-way to an area -- the extent of the area
9 impacted by changes in water levels or water
10 flows, that's a local impact. Again, important to
11 note. Regional is beyond the local area. So, the
12 definition is self-limiting. By definition all
13 groundwater impacts are either local or site.
14 There are no regional impacts according to the
15 EIS. Even though this is a very, very large
16 regional resource, but it is not a regional
17 resource from an assessment perspective. And I
18 point that out simply because, not by any way
19 suggesting that the authority is attempting to
20 mislead anybody, but it is important from impact
21 assessment to understand that that's a scaler
22 that's used in the assessment.
23 And it also defines the mitigation
24 requirements, it defines requirements that the
25 proponent commits to. And I would say I didn't
01522
1 cotton to that until rereading chapter 2 of the
2 EIS in the last ten days, that it became -- that I
3 became aware, and that's my fault, not anybody
4 else's, on the definition of a local impact.
5 In my comments and in my discussion,
6 my definition of region is different. I define
7 region as extending beyond one jurisdiction. So
8 if it extends beyond one municipality or the
9 boundaries, multiple jurisdictions, to me, that's
10 a regional impact. But that's not the scaler that
11 the assessors were using in defining this.
12 So I mention this impact assessment
13 methodology, because by this definition, and
14 essentially within the documents limiting the
15 impact assessment to the construction phase, it is
16 short term only. So the majority of assessment is
17 short term and local. The consideration of long
18 term effects is absent in large part from the
19 documents, but in our view, it needs to be there
20 for completeness, because long term impacts are
21 extremely important to the groundwater users that
22 use the water from this aquifer system.
23 Now I draw your attention to this
24 figure, and I'm sorry, I should have put the
25 figure number, but it reinforces what I was saying
01523
1 about the scaler. And this is the scaler for
2 potentially significant biophysical impacts on the
3 environment. And for short term impacts, if the
4 scalers, if the effects are only moderate and
5 local, mitigation is not required. So that says
6 that virtually all construction impacts do not
7 require mitigation.
8 If, on the other hand, the long term
9 impacts, which are not largely considered within
10 the documents, if they are local and moderate,
11 they would require mitigation.
12 And so this is an area of significant
13 concern to the municipalities. And I have heard
14 in the last two days a discussion that the
15 Authority had said that they are committed to
16 mitigating those impacts, but that is not what
17 I -- my response is a formal response to the
18 documents, and that is not what the documents have
19 said.
20 I will run quickly through the
21 reinforcement of the aquifer. It is a very large
22 aquifer system, as has been explained many times,
23 flows from east to west. Birds Hill sand and
24 gravel deposits cover about 150 square kilometres
25 of unconfined aquifer, very high quality water
01524
1 recharge to the bedrock aquifer. It is a source
2 of very high quality traditionally to the three
3 municipalities, and that has been a competitive
4 and lifestyle advantage for both the
5 municipalities and the residents; hence the level
6 of concern for this particular issue within the
7 municipalities.
8 These aquifers support well in excess
9 of 30,000 persons in the three municipalities, and
10 demand is growing quite rapidly. The
11 municipalities expect ever increasing exploitation
12 of the groundwater and are concerned that it be
13 protected for the future.
14 Some water planning has been done
15 within the region. I reference the Selkirk and
16 District Planning Area Board that has been
17 mentioned previously as being prepared by Wardrop
18 in 1999. And it is a useful document in that it
19 assesses the groundwater availability within that
20 planning district. And their conclusion is that
21 the groundwater within that planning district will
22 be fully allocated by 2030 even if there is
23 significant conservation measures taken, put in
24 place. If the conservation measures are not in
25 place or fully implemented, the allocation will be
01525
1 fully subscribed about 15 years earlier than that,
2 so prior to 2020.
3 The hazard of river infiltration is
4 recognized. East St. Paul municipality has had an
5 experience in the 1980s and 1990s, wherein
6 residents with groundwater wells within the
7 carbonate aquifer experienced contamination. And
8 as a result, East St. Paul went to a piped water
9 system. That contamination was from the Red
10 River, but it demonstrates that the mechanism of
11 contaminated water entering the carbonate aquifer
12 can readily be transmitted to wells. And I think
13 that mechanism is now well accepted. I have heard
14 it discussed several times in the last two days.
15 But it is not a hypothetical case, it has been
16 experienced by the residents of East St. Paul.
17 East St. Paul is currently short of
18 water. For the last number of years they have
19 been constructing well fields that are attempting
20 to harvest the springs that are a relic from, that
21 remain from the 1968 construction, springs that
22 have been discharging into the channel, into the
23 floodway channel. They have been attempting to
24 pick up that water by a well field at what is
25 known as the Oasis well field. And it is high
01526
1 quality water, but they need more water now. They
2 are currently short of water and will be looking
3 to exploit more.
4 There is a growing regional demand
5 that will have an impact on the groundwater regime
6 that is not accounted for in the EIS. And the
7 rationale, we heard that clearly expressed by the
8 authority, that that demand would go on regardless
9 if the floodway was expanded or not. And so
10 therefore that demand need not be considered in
11 the EIS.
12 That's an important consideration.
13 Because if that demand does go on, and I think it
14 is only a matter of time before gradient reversals
15 will take place and contamination that is in the
16 floodway channel now, as we heard about
17 previously, will be free to migrate out of the
18 channel towards wells. Hence the level of concern
19 on behalf of the municipalities that this is not a
20 short term construction of the expansion issue, it
21 is a long term conservation of water quality and
22 water quantity issue.
23 The other really significant concern
24 is that the best quality water, we have heard this
25 before, but the best quality water is currently
01527
1 being allowed to flow freely down the channel,
2 with no attempts at conservation.
3 The aquifer was very heavily impacted
4 by the 1968 construction, that's again well
5 documented in the EIS. And the proponents have
6 done a very good job in bringing -- in attempting
7 to assess that impact, even though presumably it
8 is not part of the expansion area, but it was an
9 attempt to show how the baseline has evolved. And
10 there has been more than six metres of drawdown in
11 this area with a very, very large cone. Much of
12 the flows appears to be attributable to blowouts
13 and uncontrolled flow into the channel. Because
14 of this past experience, because of this past
15 experience with the impacts of construction, the
16 institutions, i.e., the municipalities and the
17 residents of this area are strongly sensitized to
18 this issue.
19 And I can tell you, Mr. Chair, the
20 process that I engaged in was an evaluation, and
21 then multiple meetings with the municipalities as
22 I reported back my conclusions and sought more
23 information from them. And feelings among my
24 client group were very strong. It is both an
25 economic issue and an emotional issue with many
01528
1 people in this area. They are highly sensitized
2 to this issue, and I simply reinforce that with
3 the Commission.
4 This is the post floodway drawdown
5 that has been simulated by the proponent's
6 analysts, and it demonstrates the very, very
7 considerable extent of the drawdown centered right
8 on this area, very close to the area that we are
9 in right now. The RM of Springfield was certainly
10 in the centre of the impacted area
11 Now what is a blowout? I want to
12 discuss this just for a minute because there have
13 been a lot of discussions about that, and I will
14 try to explain it in very simple language. The
15 aquifer in the channel prior to 1968 was sealed by
16 very thick layers of clay and fine grain soils
17 that sealed the water in the bedrock, in the
18 limestone and dolomite. And there was high
19 pressure, high water heads sealed in the bedrock.
20 And as the clay and till were removed, at some
21 points the water pressure from underneath was
22 greater than the weight of the soil holding the
23 water in. When that happened, the soil was
24 lifted, and when it lifted it cracked and
25 fissured. It is by no means a blowout, it is not
01529
1 a bomb blast or anything of that nature. It's a
2 slow lifting of the soil, and the soil is cracked,
3 and the water can escape through those cracks, and
4 with time the cracks are expanded by the springs,
5 and the water flowing away carries a bit of soil
6 and they become, slowly become more developed with
7 time, and water can escape with less and less
8 resistance. That's typical development of what is
9 called a blowout in civil engineering terms. The
10 clay seal lifts and fractures, allowing springs to
11 flow freely, and the aquifer is largely
12 unprotected at those areas.
13 I know of no springs, in my
14 experience, that once they start flowing ever
15 reseal until the water pressure drops to the level
16 below the ground level at the spring. As a matter
17 of fact, they tend to become more prominent with
18 time.
19 So a typical blowout has been
20 explained here as being -- it reflects around the
21 bottom of the low flow channel, where this area in
22 here the soil slowly lifts, opens up so cracks can
23 form, and water from the green underlying bedrock
24 aquifer percolates up into the channel and flows
25 into the Red River. That is what blowouts do.
01530
1 Blowouts crack the soil, make it more permeable,
2 remove the natural protection that exists.
3 A huge amount of water has been lost
4 from the aquifer, initially estimated at 3,000
5 gallons per minute, the flow now is 1,000 gallons
6 a minute at Dunning crossing, about
7 4 million cubic metres or 4 billion litres a year,
8 enough water into the channel for 31,000 residents
9 within the three municipalities, about the same
10 amount as the current population of the
11 municipalities; so hence the nature of the
12 concern.
13 Virtually all of the flow appears to
14 be from the springs in the channel, but -- and
15 this information on the characterization of the
16 springs was the subject of some discussion in the
17 last two days, also was the subject of the
18 interrogatory which I have noticed here, RM 3 IR
19 3A, but there is no information on the springs,
20 but the springs are key. They are a key
21 engineering issue because they define areas of
22 sensitivity within the aquifer. Hence,
23 characterization of those springs, the lack of
24 characterization of those springs, in my view, is
25 a serious omission within the EIS.
01531
1 The basic assumption, also within the
2 engineering concept, is that these springs will be
3 allowed to flow in perpetuity, because there are
4 no alternatives discussed to bring them under
5 control. And the municipalities, as I stated
6 before, clearly do not agree with this approach.
7 It is not in keeping with the modern approaches to
8 conservation and resource management, and not an
9 acceptable approach in terms of project
10 development.
11 So the characterization of groundwater
12 conditions in the channel, because of the lack of
13 information on the springs and the flows, is
14 incomplete and inadequate. It is inadequate -- it
15 is inadequate information upon which to form a
16 decision on impacts, on the impact of this
17 project.
18 Now, it isn't, I must point out in
19 fairness, it isn't deficient if the Commission
20 accepts the proponent's definition of expansion.
21 Because the proponent's definition of expansion is
22 that those springs are there, they will continue
23 to be there, that there is no plan to change them,
24 and they would be there for the next centuries
25 regardless if the project is expanded or not. And
01532
1 I agree with that. That's correct. But I
2 disagree with that definition of the project, as
3 we will talk about later. That is really central
4 to the cumulative effects discussion.
5 Can you adequately, as Commissioners,
6 render a decision on the impact, the acceptability
7 of impacts of the expansion without considering
8 ongoing environmental effects? The municipalities
9 would strongly submit you to consider the project
10 as a whole. I will talk about that more. But the
11 groundwater conditions in the channel are a
12 fundamental input to numerical modeling, to design
13 decisions, to impact assessment, to mitigation
14 design, to monitoring, and to risk assessment.
15 They are a key piece of information that is not
16 being provided in the documents.
17 Let's talk then further about
18 cumulative effects. Cumulative effects, the
19 approach that's put forward within the EIA, is an
20 internal authority interpretation on how to apply
21 the impact assessment. The combination of the
22 impact assessment methodology and interpretation
23 of cumulative effects, if the Commission accepts
24 that argument, means that groundwater issues are
25 off the table. We do not support that, of course,
01533
1 nor is it in keeping with normal practice of
2 impact assessment. But if cumulative effects
3 assessment, and the assessment of duration and
4 severity of effects are accepted, as put forward
5 in the EIA, groundwater impacts will not be a
6 consideration for this panel. That is -- I point
7 that out because that is the net result of the
8 structure of the EIA. And I'm sure Mr. Currie
9 will have more to say on that at a later date. I
10 simply point out to the Commissioners that that is
11 how the EIA is structured.
12 That is important because the existing
13 project is unlicensed and it is non-compliant.
14 This was an interrogatory to the proponent in RM 3
15 IR 4A and 4B. It was unlicensed for good reasons,
16 there was no one in 1968 to licence it. The
17 proponent rightly points out that water was
18 property of the Crown, and the Crown in 1968 was
19 probably free to do whatever they wished with
20 groundwater. But it is non-compliant, certainly
21 with current Manitoba Government policy as
22 expressed in sustainability policy and as
23 expressed in current background to Bill 22, which
24 is groundwater management policy. And I will -- I
25 can speak further to that, if you wish, but it
01534
1 is -- when I say it is non-compliant, it is
2 non-compliant certainly from a policy perspective,
3 and it is -- I am going to ask Mr. Currie to file
4 with the Commissioners a document regarding bill
5 22, which is the Water Protection Act that is
6 currently under study, and it was a presentation
7 to Manitoba Planning Conference which laid out the
8 direction. And it is very much a direction that
9 the Commissioners, that the municipalities are
10 espousing.
11 And the theory, the hypothesis of that
12 bill, the background principle of it is that water
13 can no longer -- the quantity and quality of water
14 can no longer be taken for granted. And there is
15 specific issues they are asking for; source
16 protection, transparency and inclusiveness, water
17 shed planning, state of water shed reporting,
18 stakeholder committees and stakeholder
19 consultations, and the need to integrate land use
20 planning and water use planning.
21 You will see that the recommendations
22 that the municipalities put forward are very
23 consistent with the intent of that legislation.
24 And so nothing that the municipalities are
25 proposing is different from Manitoba policy, by
01535
1 any means, it is supportive of Provincial policy
2 in that area.
3 The suggested application of
4 cumulative effects as put forth by the proponent
5 is not rational. The CEC is invited to consider
6 assessment only for widening, but as we heard on
7 Monday -- you are also invited to consider only
8 widening and the impacts of widening, but you are
9 invited to recommend approval of the whole
10 project. That simply, Commissioners, is an
11 attempt to use a back door approach to licence the
12 entire facility, and it is not in keeping with
13 generally accepted practice with respect to these
14 facilities. The entire project must be considered
15 to assess the net effects of the project.
16 So in summary, the existing project
17 remains non-compliant, certainly, at least from a
18 policy perspective. Groundwater wastage continues
19 unabated within the existing channel, the aquifer
20 remains unprotected, health risk assessment and
21 potential risks to the residents and to the
22 municipalities are not considered, time effects
23 looking forward into the future were not
24 considered.
25 All of those issues within the
01536
1 documents are deferred to detailed design, and
2 that's highly irregular where there is an issue
3 that affects public welfare. Public welfare
4 issues -- one of the purposes of environmental
5 hearings are so that public welfare issues may
6 obtain a full airing, and the public can make a
7 decision as to whether or not these issues are
8 treated to their satisfaction, or can enjoin or
9 can prevail upon the Commission to make
10 recommendations on their behalf. But the public
11 here cannot make those representations because the
12 details are not presented. They are deferred to
13 the detailed design stage. And that's not in
14 keeping, as I note, it is not in keeping in
15 generally accepted practice for environmental
16 impact assessment. It is not in keeping with
17 general accept practice for environmental impact
18 assessment. Issues that are of strong public
19 concern are usually addressed in detail in the
20 impact assessment documents.
21 Now, the 1968 construction created a
22 series of direct hydraulic connections between the
23 floodway and the bedrock aquifers. These are
24 simulated by models, and there is quite an
25 extensive modeling exercise within the documents,
01537
1 and verified by direct observations on the wells.
2 Now, the impacts will persist for
3 centuries unless they are mitigated in some
4 fashion or the other. And I reproduce here the
5 profiles of the low flow channel inward; in other
6 words, the bottom of the low flow channel. And it
7 is of interest because the green line here was the
8 channel bottom when the survey was conducted, in
9 other words, say 2003 or 2004. The original
10 design is the red line.
11 The issue over deepening and not
12 deepening is an important one, but you can see
13 that mother nature has taken matters into her own
14 hands in some important areas where the deepening
15 appears to be as much as a metre to a metre and a
16 half in certain areas. So there has been very
17 significant deepening of the channel just through
18 natural river erosion effects and river formation,
19 river channel formation.
20 It will be a challenge for the
21 engineering team to design an erosion protection
22 system that maintains the channel back at that red
23 line, which was the original design. That will be
24 an important benefit if the channel can be
25 maintained there because more water -- the channel
01538
1 is deeper than designed. As the channel deepens,
2 more water is being bled off by the channel. So
3 backfill of the channel will be an important
4 benefit in conservation.
5 The impact of flood simulation
6 mounding received ample discussion yesterday, I
7 won't go into it further, I think it was
8 adequately explored yesterday. I can add nothing
9 to that discussion. I will discuss, though, the
10 role of models and what is the importance of
11 models in this discussion.
12 Models are mathematical simulations of
13 water flow, the combination of physics and
14 mathematics to give an understanding of how the
15 groundwater flows and how the system works. They
16 are extremely valuable as a visualization tool,
17 but at this level they can not be relied upon for
18 definitive design quality data. There is a great
19 tendency to accept the results of models as being
20 definitive. They are not. Models of this scale
21 have to be based on assumptions and they are only
22 a guide to the designers, they are not definitive,
23 deterministic. In other words, they don't present
24 the answer, they present one of a series of
25 possible answers. And models are only effective
01539
1 when they are followed up with considerable what
2 is called performance matching, continue
3 calibrating with a very, very well designed and
4 maintained monitoring network.
5 The regional models are based on
6 assumed parameters and generalized geometry, out
7 of necessity, there is not enough information
8 within this hundreds of square kilometres to give
9 the generalized geology, or to have the geology in
10 detail. But again, a good tool because it shows
11 the direction of groundwater flow, where the
12 pressure points are. They do not, though,
13 consider the nature of springs. So the closer to
14 the channel that you get, the less reliable the
15 regional model will be because, again, the nature
16 of the springs as points where water is being bled
17 off, they are essentially wells in the bottom of
18 the channel, they are not fully considered.
19 Nonetheless, the regional model is quite well done
20 and it gives an important understanding of the
21 factors governing the groundwater flow.
22 The detailed models are used for the
23 near channel environment. They are again based on
24 mod flow, and they are largely saturated flow
25 models, but because of that the modeling exercise
01540
1 is not complete. It would have been much more
2 appropriate to use -- let me go back a bit.
3 Saturated flow models are models that simulate
4 movement of water below the water table. Above
5 the water table is the unsaturated zone, or what
6 is called in hydrogeology the vados zone.
7 Simulation of impacts in the channel
8 require a different model, one that can consider
9 the movement of water in the unsaturated zone, in
10 the vados zone. And while the models are
11 presented as being calibrated and robust, when you
12 look at them in detail, it is my opinion that they
13 are not sufficiently calibrated to pass a peer
14 review. And I will go into that in more detail.
15 The reason for that is because they rely, by and
16 large, calibrated to one observation well,
17 sometimes two. And that observation well is
18 sometimes some distance from the channel, when
19 really what we are looking at is analyzing impacts
20 immediately in the vicinity of the channel. For
21 those reasons, the results are order of magnitude
22 estimates only and may vary from reality, from the
23 facts that are experienced in the field from
24 construction by a significant amount. I say by a
25 factor of two to 50 or more. That sounds like a
01541
1 large number, but a factor of 10 in hydrogeology
2 studies is not unusual, it is not unusual. Two
3 orders of magnitude is 100, so one and a half
4 orders of magnitude -- these are not uncommon
5 numbers, two to 50 with the level of detail would
6 be the range that I would put on these.
7 As a result, I do not believe that the
8 models can be relied upon for definitive hard
9 judgments at this level of detail. They are a
10 very good approximation, they give indications
11 into the mechanisms. That is very important, it
12 is guidance to the designers, but it is not a
13 definitive, this is the answer, this is what is
14 going to happen, not at this level of detail, not
15 with this level of input information.
16 Contaminant transport models would
17 normally be the follow-up to the type of modeling
18 that's presented. Contaminate transport model,
19 contaminate transport is exactly that. If a
20 contaminant enters the aquifer, where will it go
21 and how fast does it get there? They normally
22 depend, and they are built on top of a valid
23 calibrated seepage model.
24 Now, they result in -- in the EIS,
25 basically the definitions are -- the modeling in
01542
1 the EIS presents mechanisms of the flow, and
2 that's again very valuable. But there is no
3 transport modeling. Mod flow, used in the way
4 that it is, is not an appropriate tool to model
5 contaminant transport in the aquifer. There is a
6 parallel set of software that goes with mod flow
7 that is an appropriate tool, but in my estimation,
8 mod flow is not the tool. And this is technical
9 argument and I will not get into it further, but I
10 would be prepared to answer questions on it.
11 So as a result, the time estimates
12 that are presented are order of magnitude
13 estimates only.
14 The conclusion that contamination of
15 the aquifer is inconsequential is just not
16 justified on the basis of the models. And then
17 the literature is replete with areas where the
18 models -- ground truthing and performance differ
19 significantly from modeling. That's to be
20 expected. That is the norm rather than the
21 exception.
22 The physical models show surface water
23 is not readily ejected from the aquifer. And we
24 heard information on that yesterday, and I agree
25 with that. But there is probable long term plume
01543
1 development both up gradient and down gradient in
2 the vicinity of the blowouts and springs.
3 What do I mean by plume development?
4 The plume is the residual of the surface water.
5 That surface water will reside in the aquifer both
6 east and west of the channel. It is more severe
7 to the west as reported in the EIS, because that's
8 the direction of natural flow, but it can also
9 move upstream and up gradient, and progressive
10 degradation of the aquifer is probable unless it
11 is mitigated.
12 And I will show you a mechanism by
13 which that is likely occurring -- to follow up on
14 the work that was reported yesterday afternoon,
15 for that reason, there is a potential human health
16 risk that needs to be evaluated for completeness
17 of the impact assessment. I will show you just a
18 very simple simulation that I carried out to
19 satisfy myself as to the mechanisms that may
20 exist. And this is following on the geometry that
21 is reported in the Keewatin Bridge site analysis
22 where there is a blowout of the silt till
23 aquitard. The analysis it carries out applies
24 seven weeks of flood levels and then allows,
25 simulates the channel being dry for ten years to
01544
1 see if the water that intrudes into the aquifer
2 will come out of it. The intent of this is not by
3 any means to be definitive, but it is to
4 illustrate the pathway and the mechanisms of the
5 plume development that completeness in the EIS
6 requires.
7 So the basic model is to look at an
8 area equivalent to the base of the low flow
9 channel that has been disrupted by flow, so that
10 it has the permeability of a sand or a dirty
11 gravel or a fractured till, a fractured dense
12 till. And it is subjected to the flood for a
13 period of seven weeks. This is, I can't tell you
14 exactly where this is taken from, but it
15 approximates the hydrograph under flood
16 conditions.
17 And the results are this: If you look
18 at the concentration of surface water within the
19 aquifer, near the top of the carbonate bedrock,
20 immediately below the channel invert, now zero
21 percent on this concentration curve would mean no
22 surface water, 1.0 or 100 percent means that it is
23 all surface water. Using this simulation, it
24 shows that surface water rapidly enters the
25 aquifer, and after a few days the top part of the
01545
1 aquifer is predominantly surface water. The
2 pathway is there to deliver surface water.
3 And if you look at concentration below
4 the aquifer, this again is percentage surface
5 water -- a plug of surface water flows down
6 through the aquifer and through this blowout and
7 resides within the aquifer after a very few days
8 or few weeks. And when you look at the
9 concentration of surface water in the bedrock
10 after seven weeks of intrusion, about 80 percent
11 immediately under the aquifer, but the plume
12 spreads out so that the 10 percent line is about
13 100 metres upstream -- sorry, 100 metres west, 50
14 to 75 metres east. So it can move both up
15 gradient and down gradient by the natural mixing
16 mechanisms which occur.
17 So this is the shape of the plume.
18 And I won't spend more time other than to
19 demonstrate how the surface water can spread in
20 the subsurface. It is there after two years.
21 Now, what we did in the simulation is we
22 allowed -- this is with water flowing back, this
23 is a dry channel and water is flowing back, but
24 even with it flowing back for two years, there is
25 still zones of about 20 percent surface water
01546
1 remaining within the carbonate aquifer. And even
2 after six years there are zones within the
3 carbonate aquifer that are more than 10 percent
4 surface water. And the analysis shows that the
5 impact could well go to 200 metres to the west and
6 150 metres, plus or minus, to the east.
7 Now, if after 10 years there were a
8 second flood, what would happen? Well, the second
9 flood causes the plume to spread. And I will just
10 go back. This is where the plume is after two
11 years. If there is a second flood in 10 years,
12 the plume is pushed out. If there is a second
13 flood after 20 years, the plume is pushed out
14 farther, and by 20 years it is pushed out to more
15 than 500 metres to the west, more than 400 metres
16 to the east. This is a simulation only. And it
17 is based on assumed information.
18 The point of the simulation is to
19 demonstrate that the mechanism can exist, or does
20 exist. The physics are there that will allow
21 mixing of the surface water into the groundwater
22 in the carbonate aquifer, and that the migration
23 is more rapid to the east, but there is also
24 reason for concern for migration to the west.
25 It is a model to evaluate the mobility
01547
1 of the plume. And the plume is likely to be
2 mobile. A significant amount of surface water is
3 likely to remain in the aquifer. And contaminant
4 mobility, mobility of contaminated surface water
5 is a potential concern that needs further
6 investigation.
7 Second issue is areas of exposed
8 bedrock -- residents have reported to me and I
9 believe you will hear from at least one of them,
10 that bedrock exposures exist within the channel
11 particularly within the vicinity of Spring Hill.
12 I haven't investigated those areas further, but if
13 they are there, there is an area of even greater
14 susceptibility to contamination than what I have
15 modeled, and it is an area that deserves further
16 evaluation.
17 I want to speak about the issue of
18 dealing with uncertainty. Uncertainty is inherent
19 in the modeling of the subsurface. Again, we deal
20 with the information in hand, sometimes we are
21 attempting to model hundreds of square kilometres
22 with very little information. The EIS uses
23 sensitivity analysis as a tool to evaluate what
24 are called worst case scenarios. That's a
25 valuable tool, but you don't know whether those
01548
1 worst case scenarios are, in fact, worst case
2 scenarios, because the analysis is based largely
3 on assumed data, but we do know that the results
4 are not deterministic. In analysis such as this,
5 a method of probability is very valuable. And
6 that is a mechanism that I would be looking for.
7 A probabilistic risk based approach is preferred,
8 particularly where human health concerns may
9 exists.
10 What is a probabilistic approach?
11 Well, in the evaluations that are presented, the
12 permeability of the soil, for instance, or the
13 porosity of the soil is represented by a number,
14 but we know that's not the case. In fact, there
15 is some sort of a normal distribution, or perhaps
16 not normal, but some sort of a distribution of
17 values over a whole population of permeability
18 values that might exist. If that soil was all of
19 one permeability and could be represented in the
20 fashion that's here, then the numbers that are put
21 forward would be valid. But we know that, we know
22 when you dig in the subsurface sometimes we will
23 go through tens of feet of clay and it will be
24 uniform, maybe move over 50 metres and go through
25 clay and then silt and maybe sand pockets,
01549
1 whatever. It is not a uniform subsurface. The
2 results cannot be represented by a single number.
3 There is not one answer, there is a range of
4 probable answers, of possible answers.
5 And when I look at the documents, best
6 practices in evaluating groundwater impacts
7 require a look at probability. What is the
8 probability that an event will occur and that
9 contaminated water may reach the receptor?
10 Time effects -- the EIS considers only
11 construction and the longer term impacts are
12 ignored. And again there is a reason for that,
13 because from the view of the proponents, those
14 long term impacts would occur regardless, the vast
15 majority of those impacts would occur whether or
16 not the expansion goes forward. So the impacts of
17 things like uncontrolled flow are not discussed.
18 But allowing groundwater to escape into the
19 channel in an uncontrolled fashion is not best
20 practice from an engineering perspective,
21 particularly in a bedrock that is subject to
22 piping and karsting, which is formation of
23 channels in the subsurface. If that happens and
24 the springs continue to develop and the channel
25 erodes, there is progressively greater drainage of
01550
1 groundwater from the region. And hence the long
2 term impacts of that uncontrolled flow, to me,
3 require evaluation.
4 The issue of progressive contamination
5 of the aquifer is mentioned in the EIS but it is
6 discounted without analysis, by application of the
7 Ontario guidelines. That even if there is
8 migration into the aquifer, we need not be
9 concerned about it because beyond 400 metres the
10 bacteria will become inactive. And we heard the
11 CRA experts talk about that yesterday. Their
12 response was that microbes into the carbonate
13 aquifer can remain viable for kilometres, not a
14 few hundred metres.
15 So as a result, the consideration of
16 time effects, of long term effects in the EIS, in
17 our view, is a major deficiency. A deficiency
18 that can be corrected, but there is not sufficient
19 information at the moment to make a judgment as to
20 the magnitude of impacts, particularly with
21 respect to health concerns in the long term.
22 So, what are the hazards that we are
23 talking about? Well, the 1968 construction
24 removed the protective clay cover, the springs are
25 there, the bedrock may be locally exposed in the
01551
1 channel -- and I'm advised that it is by residents
2 knowledgeable in the area -- the flood water is
3 known to be polluted, there is no provision within
4 the design of this facility at the moment for
5 protection of the aquifer, because that is an
6 ongoing effect, part of the evolving baseline that
7 will continue to evolve for centuries in the
8 future, and hence not required to be addressed
9 under the terms of reference under which the
10 proponent has submitted this EIS. And that will
11 be an area of significant debate. Long term
12 depletion of groundwater, long term degradation of
13 groundwater are the hazards.
14 Potential impacts not addressed --
15 economic impact as a result of loss of benefit
16 from the groundwater resource, health and safety
17 impacts, the risk of progressive degradation, or
18 the risk of pathogenic contamination of
19 groundwater, biophysical impacts on progressive
20 degradation of water quality and reduction in safe
21 yield of the aquifer.
22 The impacts, as I said, are focused,
23 they are framed in the local context, but it is
24 clear that because of the importance of this
25 aquifer within multiple jurisdictions, they are
01552
1 regional extent with a time line well beyond the
2 limit of construction.
3 I want to focus a bit on potential
4 human health effects. I don't want to be alarmist
5 in any way. I simply mention this because, for
6 the sake of completeness, given that the
7 mechanisms exist, human health effects deserve
8 some discussion, and they are not discussed in the
9 EIS.
10 The U.S. EPA risk assessment model is
11 applicable here, and it provides a very good
12 framework for definition of risk, a risk based
13 approach, particularly with respect to
14 groundwater. We know that there is a source --
15 the U.S. EPA model is based on a source pathway
16 receptor framework. We know that there is a
17 source, there is ample supply of contaminated
18 surface water that periodically floods the
19 floodway. We know that there is a pathway. I
20 think it is agreed that the springs that emit
21 water into the floodway channel are tied into the
22 bedrock, and the monitoring system shows that the
23 bedrock aquifer is responsive to floodway, I don't
24 think there is much debate that the pathway
25 exists. There are many receptors. There are
01553
1 30,000 people, somewhat fewer than 10,000 families
2 using groundwater within the three municipalities.
3 A human health risk of potential human health
4 impacts is warranted in this condition.
5 Who is potentially at risk and what
6 are they at risk for? Well, if you look at
7 potential stakeholders, being families, the
8 municipalities or institutions of Government here,
9 and the public at large, who is at risk and what
10 are the risks? The risks are economic impact,
11 health and safety impact, and change in the
12 physical environment. All of these parties are at
13 risk to a greater or lesser degree -- let me back
14 up. All of these parties must be considered to be
15 at risk to a greater or lesser degree until
16 rigorous risk evaluation demonstrates otherwise.
17 That's one of the purposes of the EIS.
18 I want to discuss briefly the role of
19 the authority as groundwater user. One of the
20 interrogatories to the authority that the
21 municipalities put forward was to ask the MFA for
22 its policies with respect to groundwater
23 management. And the interrogatory is there for
24 the Commission to read. It basically -- I read
25 the interrogatory and I read the EIS, and although
01554
1 the MFA is a very significant water user, there
2 was no stated policy from within the corporation
3 on how groundwater would be managed or how they
4 would approach groundwater management. It is
5 clear that MFA needs to work -- we are looking for
6 recommendations from the Commission in that
7 regard, that they move in compliance with the law,
8 and we heard yesterday on some of that, but
9 certainly with respect to public policy in the
10 Province of Manitoba with respect to groundwater
11 use. Part of that is development of a groundwater
12 management plan that would focus on conserving and
13 protecting groundwater, and that would provide
14 aquifer protection for all authority lands, and
15 would implement a community based monitoring plan.
16 The authority -- in the EIS there is,
17 the issue of monitoring plan is discussed from
18 time to time, and it is passed off to other arms
19 of government. And hence my discussion,
20 Mr. Chair, with respect, that the conditions of
21 approval must apply to successors to the
22 authority. The conditions of approval must apply
23 to the operator as well as to the landlord, that
24 is very important. And because there is no long
25 term monitoring plan, there is no -- and I don't
01555
1 want this to sound, it perhaps sounds more harsh
2 than I intended. A proponent of this nature,
3 impacting groundwater resource to the extent that
4 this project has impacted it, would normally be
5 submitting a substantial monitoring plan as part
6 of the EIS, and would be required to
7 comprehensively monitor the state of the resource
8 on an ongoing basis. And the proponent has
9 monitoring responsibility. We are asking that it
10 be -- that it involve the community, that it be
11 comprehensive and that it include a comprehensive
12 baseline, the baseline should be underway now.
13 All of the monitors should be reviewed to assess
14 the conditions of the wells. If the well is more
15 than 15 years old, it probably was developed to a
16 standard that applied to a different time and
17 area, different time and different standards. All
18 monitoring needs to be reviewed and monitoring
19 should be in place, the baseline completed, well
20 before the first shovel goes into the ground. A
21 comprehensive baseline in advance of construction
22 is mandatory in our view.
23 Dispute resolution and mitigation has
24 been discussed. We are seeking commitment to a
25 process and an institution where decisions are
01556
1 science based, that they be adjudicated at arm's
2 length from the operator and the authority by a
3 fully funded independent agency with well defined
4 appeal mechanisms. So that, as was noted
5 yesterday, that claims with respect to impacts do
6 not become embroiled in long term, expensive and
7 technical and legal arguments, that they can be
8 adjudicated by an arm's length group that does not
9 have a stake in the outcome.
10 In summary, the groundwater is a
11 critical resource to the region that includes the
12 three municipal municipalities. The experience in
13 East St. Paul has demonstrated that microbial
14 contamination of the bedrock has been an ongoing
15 hazard. There have been real events. It isn't a
16 hypothetical event. The EIS conclusion of
17 maintaining status quo with respect to continued
18 wastage of groundwater is not acceptable, nor
19 probably legal when you consider the
20 Sustainability Act.
21 The EIS is severely flawed in that it
22 does not consider ongoing impacts on quality,
23 quantity and safety of the water that sustains
24 30,000 residents within the municipalities. The
25 impacts that result both from the cumulative
01557
1 effects -- sorry, the impacts result both from
2 cumulative effects of the facility and ongoing
3 operations. And we are seeking that MFA come into
4 compliance with Manitoba policy and statutes.
5 The modelling results are an
6 approximation only, and cannot be used for
7 definitive basis for critical decisions regarding
8 design of the facility. The EIS does not address
9 adequately the issues of conservation, aquifer
10 protection and sustainability.
11 A health risk assessment to the same
12 level of rigor as which the flooding risk
13 assessment is carried out is an essential
14 component of project decision making, considering
15 the identified potential for an ongoing long term
16 intrusion of surface water into an aquifer that's
17 currently used as a potable supply.
18 Despite these concerns, and after a
19 very significant discussion with the
20 municipalities, with the elected representatives
21 of the municipalities, the municipalities are
22 recommending approval of the project, but ask the
23 Commission to issue conditions of approval that
24 will require solutions be brought forward on the
25 issues that have been identified.
01558
1 These conditions include the
2 following: That the authority and the floodway
3 operators comply with all regulations governing
4 groundwater management in Manitoba. That ongoing
5 exposure of the aquifer to contaminated surface
6 water poses a potential health risk that must be
7 assessed and remediated, if necessary. And it is
8 of interest to note that that mechanism of
9 contamination -- bad choice of words. I want to
10 make it clear that it is the issue of potential
11 contamination, is not as a result of this
12 proposal. If that mechanism is, as we've assessed
13 it to be, it has been going on since the original
14 floodway was constructed. So, it has no way,
15 anything to do with the proposal that's in front
16 of us. It has to do with the facility that sits
17 there today in the geologic conditions that exist
18 there today. But the risk to the aquifer and the
19 associated risk to human health must be assessed.
20 The ALARA principle, which is as low
21 as reasonably achievable, is a very well accepted
22 principle in environmental management. It means
23 that you invest to the level where you can achieve
24 results. And the municipalities are asking that
25 the ALARA principle apply to the conservation, to
01559
1 the groundwater protection and conservation
2 aspects of the entire floodway project. In other
3 words, apply ALARA to groundwater conservation and
4 protection. A baseline be established prior to
5 commencement of construction.
6 That an arm's length, independent
7 institution be established to adjudicate claims
8 and mitigation in accordance with the
9 recommendations made within this submission.
10 That there be a comprehensive
11 characterization of the channel, including all
12 existing springs, and that this be conducted as
13 part of the pre-construction baseline. That a
14 human health risk assessment be conducted on the
15 groundwater systems in the vicinity of the
16 floodway, of the existing floodway, to assess the
17 impacts and risk on existing and potential future
18 intrusion of surface water.
19 We are asking the Commission that you
20 reject the proposed Authority methodology for
21 cumulative effects, and that the project be
22 assessed in its entirety, in other words, at the
23 1968 phase, plus the proposed expansion be
24 considered together, because it is not at all
25 clear to us how you can licence an entire project
01560
1 if you do not consider an entire project. So that
2 the project must be considered in its entirety.
3 Alternatively, in our view, the only other option
4 open to the Commission is to reject the approval.
5 So, to be considered in its entirety so that the
6 entire facility be appropriately subjected to
7 impact assessment and be licenced with the
8 appropriate conditions.
9 And that, Mr. Chairman, and ladies and
10 gentlemen, concludes my remarks. I would be
11 pleased to answer any questions.
12 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much,
13 Mr. Clifton. Mr. Handlon, are you prepared to go
14 now or would you rather have a few minutes?
15 MR. HANDLON: I would need a few
16 minutes. And the one point that I would like to
17 raise, we did receive a report from Mr. Clifton, I
18 think his characterization of it was a brief
19 report. It is 16 or 18 pages. And his
20 presentation this afternoon was much more than
21 simply a restatement or restructuring of the
22 information in his report. There was some
23 restructuring of his report, but there was
24 considerable new information analysis, information
25 statements that were not contained in the original
01561
1 report. I note your requirement that people file
2 their submissions within a reasonable period of
3 time, within two weeks of the hearing itself, and
4 I note that although this presentation was very
5 well done on the computer screen, that we do not
6 have an actual physical copy of his presentation.
7 That hasn't been provided. There have been many
8 slides that have come up, a lot of information
9 that has come up and gone by very quickly.
10 I think at minimum, and I will have to
11 discuss this with my client at the break here, but
12 at a minimum we should be provided with physical
13 copies of the slides so we have something to work
14 on as we move forward.
15 MR. CURRIE: Mr. Chairman, I gave Mr.
16 Schwartz a copy of the presentation assuming that
17 you were a team of lawyers. And he has had it
18 since I walked in this afternoon.
19 MR. HANDLON: If you have provided it,
20 then my apologies. Sorry, about that. We would
21 require, though, some time to consider the
22 substantially new matters that were raised, and
23 I'm not too sure what the result of that is. If
24 we have a physical hard copy, thank you, thank you
25 for that. We would need to assess that. So, if
01562
1 we could take a short break and we will consider
2 our position.
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. Ten minutes? Is
4 that sufficient time, Mr. Handlon?
5 MR. HANDLON: Yes.
6
7 (Proceedings recessed at 2:20 p.m. and
8 reconvened at 2:35 p.m.)
9
10 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. We're ready to
11 get back at it.
12 MS. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, as we are
13 starting, can I enter Mr. Clifton's presentation
14 in as exhibit number 60.
15
16 (EXHIBIT 60: Presentation of Mr.
17 Wayne Clifton)
18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
19 Mr. Handlon.
20 MR. HANDLON: Yes, thank you. I'm
21 sorry we took as long as we did at the break, we
22 had to have some discussion because, as I said
23 before the break, there is new information
24 contained in Mr. Clifton's report. Although his
25 original report indicated that he done some, I
01563
1 believe the statement was simulations, we
2 certainly did not receive the details of any
3 simulations. I'm not even sure in his original
4 report if he stated the conclusions of the
5 simulations, but certainly there is considerable
6 more work that has been done, and some detail has
7 been provided. Although we do not have the model
8 or the database that Mr. Clifton used in his
9 presentation. So in that respect, I think in the
10 fairness of this hearing that we should be allowed
11 an opportunity to obtain that information from
12 Mr. Clifton.
13 I will proceed ahead with
14 cross-examination, but reserving the right to have
15 Mr. Clifton, certainly with the requirement, as
16 we'll get into the details of it during
17 questioning as to the model that was used and the
18 database, with the right to call him back, you
19 know, if after reflection on this matter that we
20 need to ask further questions of him. It may well
21 be that in going through the material and the
22 further information that he provides that we may
23 well have enough information to be able to deal
24 with it on redirect or re-examination later in
25 this proceeding.
01564
1 So with that, I'll proceed, if that's
2 satisfactory.
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Satisfactory.
4 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
5 Mr. Clifton, so I now have a physical
6 copy of the report from Mr. Schwartz. So you just
7 had -- when did you -- I take it your presentation
8 today has been put together through the evolution
9 of time even up until probably yesterday?
10 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct. I
11 submitted the written report approximately the 2nd
12 of February, and then was out of the country for
13 two weeks, and upon my return put together the
14 PowerPoint presentation.
15 MR. HANDLON: So the PowerPoint
16 presentation, it's been ready for a few days, has
17 it?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Since last night.
19 MR. HANDLON: Since last night, okay.
20 And late last night, was it?
21 MR. CLIFTON: Well, it wasn't too bad.
22 But the majority of it was put together on
23 Saturday night, Sunday night, and incorporated
24 some minor changes last night from information
25 that was communicated in the first two days of the
01565
1 hearings that I attended this week.
2 MR. HANDLON: And the slides that you
3 had on the modeling, they were done as of February
4 2nd, were they?
5 MR. CLIFTON: No, they weren't. The
6 conclusions were done, but I made up the slides
7 again on the weekend.
8 MR. HANDLON: But the modeling was
9 done?
10 MR. CLIFTON: The modeling was done in
11 rudimentary form by the 2nd of February, yes.
12 MR. HANDLON: Okay. So you came to
13 the conclusions before, while the modeling was
14 still rudimentary?
15 MR. CLIFTON: Taking it off the
16 computer screen.
17 MR. HANDLON: You could have provided
18 that to us earlier, though, couldn't you?
19 MR. CLIFTON: The final production of
20 those slides was completed on Saturday morning.
21 MR. HANDLON: Okay. And when was the
22 modeling actually done?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Thursday and Friday, it
24 was completed, the first part of it was completed
25 prior to the 2nd of February, and it got my review
01566
1 and finalized on Thursday and Friday.
2 MR. HANDLON: Okay. Your review --
3 was the modeling done by someone else?
4 MR. CLIFTON: The modeling was done by
5 somebody else, yes.
6 MR. HANDLON: Can you tell us who did
7 the modeling?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Dr. Hunvu in our office
9 in Regina.
10 MR. HANDLON: We'll get into some
11 details on it. One of the last slides that you
12 had up on the screen this afternoon -- now I've
13 got the physical copy, I can refer to it. I
14 believe it's the slide that you had, long-term
15 monitoring, and that -- is this one of the
16 recommendations that you're making or one of the
17 slides of you pointing out deficiencies?
18 MR. CLIFTON: This slide identifies
19 the issue, that with respect to long-term plan, or
20 long-term monitoring, there is no firm commitment
21 within the EIS or in the response to the
22 interrogatories that were submitted. We're simply
23 stating a principle on behalf of the
24 municipalities that as a proponent, that the
25 proponent of a project that already has caused
01567
1 long-term impacts, that there is a responsibility
2 to design and implement a comprehensive monitoring
3 program.
4 MR. HANDLON: I'm just going to put up
5 on the screen one of the information requests, and
6 you were aware of that process and I think you had
7 some involvement with it?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, I drafted some
9 questions on behalf of the municipalities.
10 MR. HANDLON: And you read those
11 information requests, the responses?
12 MR. CURRIE: Mr. Chairman, at the
13 break in proceedings, you need one of our
14 technicians -- I simply am not technical.
15 MR. HANDLON: Perhaps what we'll do
16 is, since the technology is being worked on -- do
17 you have copies of the information requests?
18 MR. CLIFTON: They are in my briefcase
19 at the back of the room.
20 MR. HANDLON: We can find an extra
21 copy of that. It's an information request, and
22 it's RM 3 IR 4C.
23 MR. CURRIE: I have it.
24 MR. HANDLON: Do you have that,
25 Mr. Clifton?
01568
1 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, I have it.
2 MR. HANDLON: And this is in response,
3 this is from the municipality 4 C, and the
4 question posed simply was the current MFEA
5 management policies, protocols and processes which
6 govern groundwater management and extraction;
7 correct?
8 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct.
9 MR. HANDLON: And the response from
10 the Manitoba Floodway Authority's policy is to
11 minimize effects to groundwater created by the
12 project. And the next statement is,
13 "The overall mitigation strategy for
14 potential groundwater impacts includes
15 four main components."
16 And I won't read through all the details of those
17 components, but let me just highlight those
18 components. The first is prevention through
19 physical design, correct?
20 MR. CLIFTON: That's right.
21 MR. HANDLON: And we know, just on
22 that point alone, we know that through the course
23 of the engineering designs and over the course
24 that you have been involved with this project in
25 doing a review of the technical -- of the EIS,
01569
1 that you are aware of a physical change in the
2 project from the planned deepening to widening of
3 the channel?
4 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
5 MR. HANDLON: And that would be part
6 of that principle of prevention through physical
7 design, and that would be a component of that and
8 you wouldn't criticize that in any way, would you?
9 MR. CLIFTON: No, that's a positive.
10 MR. HANDLON: Number 2, environmental
11 protection during construction, and it talks about
12 environmental plans during the course of
13 construction. You are familiar with those types
14 of environmental protection plans?
15 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
16 MR. HANDLON: And number 3, post
17 construction monitoring and follow-up, and that's
18 into the future, and that clearly is past the
19 construction stage, correct?
20 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct. But we
21 also had asked for a definition of the adaptive
22 management strategy, because I personally still do
23 not know what that is, I could not advise my
24 client as to what it was.
25 MR. HANDLON: Let's just read it here.
01570
1 This was a question posed, and a fair enough
2 question that was posed.
3 "MFA has committed to an adaptive
4 management approach to environmental
5 issues. A monitoring follow-up
6 program will be prepared by MFA and
7 its consultants to verify the
8 environmental assessment predictions
9 and the success of the physical works
10 put in place to address the
11 groundwater issues. The post
12 construction monitoring and follow-up
13 plan will also be submitted to
14 Manitoba Conservation."
15 And I'm going to get into some more detail that's
16 been discussed during the course of this hearing,
17 but when you say in your slide there is a
18 deficiency that there's no commitment to long-term
19 monitoring, I submit that there is a commitment as
20 stated. And this is a restatement of various
21 provisions in the EIS itself, but certainly this
22 does indicate that there is a commitment to
23 continuing monitoring, testing and follow-up;
24 correct?
25 MR. CLIFTON: The operative words I
01571
1 believe here are "post construction." There is no
2 commitment within the EIS that I was able to
3 identify to establishing that comprehensive plan
4 in advance of construction.
5 So my question, my advice to my
6 clients was if you cannot -- if there is not an
7 adequate baseline to which you can track the
8 impacts of construction, how can you make an
9 assessment as to what the impacts are? If you
10 don't have the baseline, the post construction
11 follow-up is not very meaningful.
12 MR. HANDLON: Well, I understood your
13 criticism was that there was not long-term
14 monitoring plan. Is your criticism that there
15 wasn't a long term monitoring plan committed to
16 prior to construction?
17 MR. CLIFTON: An essential component
18 of the long-term monitoring plan is the baseline
19 prior to construction, and for a significant
20 period prior to construction, so the long-term
21 impacts can be adjudicated. Because one of the
22 scalers in impact assessment in mitigation is
23 mitigation will take place if impacts are detected
24 through a well designed comprehensive monitoring
25 plan. But in the absence of a baseline, how do
01572
1 you make judgments as to impacts?
2 MR. HANDLON: So your point is that
3 there needs to be an appropriate baseline
4 established first, future monitoring plans are
5 important, but there needs to be a baseline. Is
6 that what you're saying? Is that the deficiency?
7 MR. CLIFTON: The point I make is that
8 I would expect to find in the EIS the statement of
9 principles and outline for a comprehensive
10 monitoring program, which includes sufficient
11 monitoring and sufficient density and regularity
12 of monitoring to be able to track, to be able to
13 establish the baseline beforehand and to track the
14 impacts to construction and into the long-term, so
15 that the proposed mitigation strategy can be
16 implemented. I do not see -- I don't know how you
17 would implement the mitigation strategy with the
18 monitoring strategy that's proposed.
19 MR. HANDLON: Are you saying you don't
20 see it because you don't see details of a baseline
21 study?
22 MR. CLIFTON: That's one component. I
23 don't see the monitoring network.
24 MR. HANDLON: Well, you've been
25 here --
01573
1 MR. CLIFTON: Several times -- I'm
2 sorry.
3 MR. HANDLON: Okay. So when you say
4 there is no long-term monitoring plan, that was a
5 deficiency, you certainly knew from the responses
6 to the information requests that certainly was
7 planned by the Floodway Authority. It's right in
8 the statement that I read, correct?
9 MR. CLIFTON: In several, in several
10 places in the EIS reference is made that the
11 long-term monitoring plan will be implemented by a
12 third party, not by the authority, that it will be
13 the responsibility of the province by some
14 mechanism to conduct that monitoring.
15 I would look for a succinct,
16 well-defined monitoring program that lays out the
17 principles, the plan, procedures for
18 communication, and action, how the information is
19 actioned. I simply didn't see that.
20 MR. HANDLON: Okay. I'm just going to
21 read to you the EIS, and its page 5-23, and it has
22 under the section monitoring, and I'll just read
23 it to you.
24 "Groundwater elevation and water
25 quality monitoring will occur during
01574
1 construction to establish response of
2 the bedrock at the Birds Hill aquifer
3 and to identify any interconnections
4 to the carbonate aquifer. Baseline
5 groundwater elevation and quality data
6 has been collected. Groundwater
7 monitoring programs will be required
8 along the floodway, including the
9 bridge and aqueduct dewatering sites.
10 A monitoring plan will be developed
11 during detailed design prior to
12 construction."
13 So you would have read that, would you not?
14 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
15 MR. HANDLON: Yes.
16 MR. CLIFTON: But now can you read to
17 me how that integrates with the long-term
18 monitoring for the project?
19 MR. HANDLON: I'll read you what the
20 commitments are that had been made during the
21 course of this hearing, that in addition to the
22 monitoring stated in the EIS that I just read to
23 you, in addition to the response to the
24 information request that there would be post
25 construction monitoring follow-up, we have also
01575
1 heard evidence here that there would be regular
2 consultations with the municipalities, for
3 example, monthly or bimonthly meetings with the
4 Floodway Authority to provide updates on the
5 project and progress. That's regular
6 consultation leading up to and through
7 construction, that's been stated. Further, the
8 Floodway Authority plans to form a community with
9 Water Stewardship, a community liaison committee
10 for each dewatering site, so for each dewatering
11 site, for the bridges, for the aqueducts, to
12 involve municipal officials and nearby residents
13 to ensure their involvement in the development of
14 groundwater monitoring and mitigation related to
15 the project components.
16 Were you aware of that from the
17 evidence?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
19 MR. HANDLON: If you could -- I asked
20 you if you were aware of that, and let me finish.
21 In addition --
22 MR. CURRIE: Mr. Chairman.
23 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Currie, I get the
24 impression Mr. Clifton is quite able to take care
25 of himself, and I think you are engaging in a
01576
1 fairly decent dialogue here. So I don't think
2 either is cutting off either, so.
3 MR. CURRIE: Okay.
4 MR. HANDLON: And further commitment
5 that was made during the course, if not in the EIS
6 certainly in the course of this hearing, or in the
7 information request responses, in addition MFA
8 plans to form a community liaison committee for
9 the overall groundwater monitoring and mitigation
10 program during construction and post construction.
11 So I have put to you a summary, I
12 believe, of the commitments that have been made by
13 the Floodway Authority as to monitoring. And I
14 suggest to you that your statement that there was
15 no commitment to long-term monitoring is simply
16 not correct in face of that evidence.
17 Would you agree with me that perhaps
18 there is an overstatement in your slide here?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Not at all, Mr. Handlon,
20 not at all. The --
21 MR. HANDLON: I thought so.
22 MR. CLIFTON: The first part of your
23 statement where you read in the construction
24 component is essentially the issue that I was
25 addressing, and that is the piecemeal nature of
01577
1 the monitoring proposal during construction, that
2 it's a site-by-site, resident-by-resident basis,
3 as opposed to a comprehensive global management of
4 the aquifer system.
5 The documentation in the EIS is very
6 much directed at the engineering requirements for
7 construction, and how you manage through those
8 construction issues. What I was looking for from
9 a resource management perspective is how the
10 resource overall, how the aquifer overall is
11 managed. And if additional monitoring is required
12 on a construction site-by-site basis, so be it. I
13 think those recommendations with respect to
14 individual sites are excellent. They need to be
15 framed within a comprehensive monitoring framework
16 for the aquifer, including a comprehensive
17 baseline prior to any construction taking place.
18 MR. HANDLON: I'm just reading, it's
19 preliminary engineering report appendix P, and
20 that deals with surface water intrusion modeling.
21 And recommendation number 6, under recommendation
22 number 6, number 1, I'll just read it to you.
23 "Groundwater monitoring should be
24 continued during floodway construction
25 and for several years thereafter to
01578
1 establish any response to the bedrock
2 and Birds Hill aquifers and to
3 identify any possible unforeseen
4 interconnections to the upper
5 carbonate aquifer. Existing
6 monitoring wells installed during
7 PDEA-1 investigations can be used for
8 this purpose."
9 First of all, question, did you read this report?
10 MR. CLIFTON: I did. And let me say
11 that I think again, that -- two things. Number 1,
12 I didn't see the recommendations of appendix P
13 reflected in the main engineering report, and I
14 did not see it reflected in the EIS. There is a
15 requirement, or an undertaking in the EIS to
16 monitoring and recognizing the need for
17 monitoring. But the technical requirements out of
18 the technical appendices did not penetrate
19 through, did not flow through the engineering
20 report into the EIS. Hence my statement of
21 commitment.
22 And the second component of that is
23 that statement is predicated on the fact, on the
24 assumption that the current monitoring network is
25 adequate. As I said during my presentation, it
01579
1 most likely, if it's more than 15 years old, it
2 most likely is inadequate, both in quality and in
3 quantity of monitoring.
4 MR. HANDLON: It's just been
5 installed.
6 MR. CLIFTON: Sorry?
7 MR. HANDLON: It's been installed
8 recently, it's not 15 years old. The PDA-1 is --
9 MR. CLIFTON: Mr. Chair, I can't react
10 to that.
11 THE CHAIRMAN: Then you don't need to.
12 MR. CLIFTON: But I think, in
13 fairness, I mean, this is part of the transparency
14 and communication issues. It's absolutely
15 indicative. We are being asked to respond in very
16 short notice to information, and we're not being
17 given the information. And I object to being
18 played for a patsy.
19 MR. HANDLON: You're not given the
20 information? I understand that you did meet with
21 Mr. Bert Smith last fall in Winnipeg?
22 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
23 MR. HANDLON: And that was pursuant to
24 an invitation that had been extended to one of the
25 municipalities by the Manitoba Floodway Authority,
01580
1 correct?
2 MR. CLIFTON: I don't know that. I
3 was in the city for a meeting, I was asked to
4 attend a meeting that had been prior arranged with
5 the RM.
6 MR. HANDLON: So any information that
7 you sought from the engineers or from the Floodway
8 Authority, those requests haven't been turned
9 down?
10 MR. CLIFTON: Well, I think it's
11 worthwhile examining that a bit, Mr. Handlon,
12 because the EIS that I was given to review by my
13 client, by the municipalities, was two documents.
14 With the noted appendices. I reviewed those
15 documents, reported back to my client that there
16 was insufficient information upon which to base a
17 conclusion on the adequacy of the impact
18 assessment.
19 We had that meeting in the morning.
20 In the afternoon we met with Mr. Smith and
21 Mr. McNeil, and were advised that there was an
22 engineering report that had not been distributed,
23 but was provided to me at that meeting. That was
24 the first I was aware of that engineering report
25 and that was in to December.
01581
1 And to assimilate that -- I may be --
2 I can confirm the date, but anyways the subject of
3 that meeting was the first time that I had the
4 full technical substance of the documents, which
5 were absolutely essential to evaluating the
6 technical adequacy of the EIS.
7 MR. HANDLON: My information is that
8 you attended at the offices of MFA or KGS on
9 October 6th, that was your first meeting with
10 Mr. Smith and Mr. McNeil?
11 MR. CLIFTON: It was at that meeting,
12 if that's a good date -- we'll confirm the date,
13 but if that's the date, that's the date I was
14 given the documents.
15 MR. HANDLON: You were given a CD of
16 all the engineering reports and the appendices.
17 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
18 MR. HANDLON: And all of those
19 engineering reports are referred to in the body of
20 the EIS, correct?
21 MR. CLIFTON: Well, I have read a lot
22 of EISs, and I can tell you that it was not clear
23 to me that they were documents that were available
24 to the public.
25 MR. HANDLON: Well, whether -- they
01582
1 were available to the public and they were
2 identified in the EIS. And once you -- I
3 understand that you were asked whether you had
4 read them, and you requested copies of those
5 engineering reports and were provided them,
6 correct?
7 MR. CLIFTON: They were provided to me
8 that day.
9 MR. HANDLON: Yes, and that was in
10 October.
11 MR. CLIFTON: Whatever the date was,
12 the date was. But the point was they were not
13 distributed prior to request, I mean, highly
14 unusual circumstance. Anyways --
15 MR. HANDLON: So they are referred to
16 in the EIS, and do you want me to identify where
17 in the EIS they are referred to?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
19 MR. HANDLON: Okay.
20 MR. CLIFTON: I would appreciate that.
21 MR. HANDLON: Mr. Clifton, one of the
22 locations that the engineering reports are
23 referred to is at pages 410 to 411. The
24 introduction is at page 410, and it talked about
25 the preliminary design of the floodway expansion.
01583
1 It was separated into two project definition
2 stages. The first phase consisted of primarily
3 site investigations and baseline data acquisition
4 to determine the existing conditions. This phase
5 is known as project definition environmental
6 assessment part 1, PDA-1.
7 A second phase, PDA-2, consisted of
8 predesign of the various components of the
9 Floodway Expansion Project. Many of these
10 components interrelated to each other in the
11 predesign process. PDA-1 was separated by MFEA
12 into two work packages, and then it goes on. And
13 then at table 4.2-1, they were appendices of
14 preliminary engineering reports, and there are
15 appendices A through S. And also at page 2-17,
16 under section 2.4.1, there is a reference,
17 technical studies specific to project, and studies
18 completed by various qualified engineering firms
19 during the project predesign process, including
20 detailed project description information, forms of
21 primary technical reference documents for this
22 EIS.
23 "Separate reports completed and
24 available publicly on the completed
25 predesign work for the project are
01584
1 referenced below and detailed in
2 chapter 11."
3 And then it goes through description, a more
4 generalized description of the engineering
5 reports.
6 So I suggest to you if you read the
7 EIS, it was apparent, it would have been apparent
8 to you that there are technical engineering
9 studies that form the primary technical reference
10 documents for the EIS, correct?
11 MR. CLIFTON: I would refer you to the
12 index --
13 MR. HANDLON: Could you answer --
14 THE CHAIRMAN: Let him answer.
15 MR. CLIFTON: I'd refer you to the
16 index, which is normally where I assess structure
17 and the documents available. Remember, I am
18 looking at the EIS purely from the perspective of
19 groundwater. And when I look at the structure of
20 the documents that are included in the EIS, it
21 notes the appendices and the technical appendices
22 and figures and so on. Nowhere in that table of
23 contents is the presence of the engineering
24 reports and its technical appendices mentioned as
25 part of the document. It would normally be
01585
1 referenced there.
2 MR. HANDLON: Well, with respect --
3 MR. CLIFTON: And I accept what you're
4 reading to me. If I read -- when I read through
5 that, it obviously did not dawn on me that there
6 was a separate document, outside of the
7 submissions that were here, that were available
8 for technical review.
9 I accept your submission that that was
10 provided to me in October, and I made my way
11 through the documents as required to form my
12 conclusion. So we overcame that temporary
13 deficiency.
14 MR. HANDLON: And when were you
15 retained?
16 MR. CLIFTON: Probably a month prior
17 to that.
18 MR. HANDLON: In September of 2004?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Approximately, yes.
20 MR. HANDLON: One of the slides you
21 showed near the end of your presentation, and I'm
22 having difficulty locating it right now, maybe you
23 could help me, if you recall -- and it dealt with
24 potential contamination of the groundwater
25 aquifer. And I believe you added the word
01586
1 "potential" when you were giving your evidence,
2 even though it wasn't reflected on the slide
3 itself.
4 MR. CLIFTON: I'm sorry, Mr. Handlon,
5 there was a slide that referred to potential
6 for --
7 MR. HANDLON: Well, the slide
8 referenced contamination of groundwater aquifer,
9 and while you were reading from it you added the
10 word "potential."
11 MR. CLIFTON: On page 26 is --
12 MR. HANDLON: And perhaps it's the
13 one, time effects.
14 MR. CLIFTON: On page 25 of the
15 handout, yes, that's where I see the time effects
16 line.
17 MR. HANDLON: Is that -- and before
18 you put it on the screen, is that where you added
19 the word "potential"?
20 MR. CLIFTON: Perhaps. It certainly
21 would be suitable in there.
22 MR. HANDLON: Pardon me?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. I would have to
24 check the transcript, but I would agree potential
25 progressive contamination of the aquifer is --
01587
1 MR. HANDLON: Right, okay. So when
2 you had the slide, progressive under time effects,
3 you had the bullet point, progressive
4 contamination of aquifer, you qualified that in
5 your evidence to say potential progressive
6 contamination of aquifer?
7 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
8 MR. HANDLON: And that accurately
9 reflects what you had in your report as well?
10 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
11 MR. HANDLON: If we could go back to
12 your report itself, and I have some questions
13 arising out of the report that I had, and that's
14 the only opportunity I had to review your
15 evidence. If there are any areas, as we go
16 through your report, where you know that there has
17 been a change in your evidence to what you
18 presented this afternoon in your slides, or if you
19 added something, then you will let me know. Is
20 that all right, Mr. Clifton?
21 MR. CLIFTON: I will try to do so,
22 yes.
23 MR. HANDLON: Okay. Now, in the
24 report itself you outlined what you reviewed in
25 the course of doing your assessment. And you
01588
1 referred to the EIS and you didn't refer
2 specifically to the engineering reports. Was that
3 just an oversight, or had you, by the time you
4 prepared your report, read over all of the
5 engineering reports?
6 MR. CLIFTON: I had read the
7 engineering report pertaining to groundwater. And
8 the term EIS that I used there is the collective
9 term, that is the statement itself plus the
10 technical appendices that I had reviewed.
11 MR. HANDLON: Yes. And the EIS, you
12 know after being pointed out, it was based on the
13 technical appendices?
14 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
15 MR. HANDLON: Now, you indicated
16 another individual at your firm -- and how many
17 individuals are there in your firm, approximately?
18 MR. CLIFTON: About 85.
19 MR. HANDLON: Okay. And who else did
20 you have involved with you in doing the review, or
21 was it yourself primarily?
22 MR. CLIFTON: It was myself assisted
23 by Dr. Hunvu as an analyst.
24 MR. HANDLON: Now, you indicated as to
25 your background and your experience, and you
01589
1 indicated that you have been involved in many
2 areas of civil engineering, and latterly for
3 approximately 30 years involved in specifically
4 the mining industry, and have done a lot of work
5 in the mining industry as it relates to
6 groundwater effects?
7 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, among other
8 industries, but certainly significant activity in
9 the mining industry.
10 MR. HANDLON: You're a geotechnical
11 engineer. Is that a specific designation that was
12 available at the time you were obtaining your
13 certifications?
14 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
15 MR. HANDLON: And now certification
16 process in Saskatchewan, does it have a specific
17 designation for hydrogeologist?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Geo-scientists were
19 added a number of years ago, and many subdivisions
20 within that. I was eligible to change my
21 registration. I elected not to. I stayed with
22 the traditional designation granted at the time of
23 my degree.
24 MR. HANDLON: Your experience with
25 groundwater in the mining industry, and I take it
01590
1 this would be primarily being involved in the
2 environmental impacts of the mining industry as it
3 relates to various environmental issues, but
4 particularly, or in part water?
5 MR. CLIFTON: In part, yes.
6 MR. HANDLON: And so other than
7 studying the effects in the mining industry on
8 water, have you done other work in respect to
9 hydrology and water effects?
10 MR. CLIFTON: It's an ongoing part of
11 virtually all projects I work on. There's been --
12 it's a common constituent or common component of
13 project delivery. When you said I did additional
14 work on it, I'm not sure what you mean.
15 MR. HANDLON: Well, the work that
16 you've done in the area of hydrogeology has been
17 in relation to the mining industry particularly?
18 MR. CLIFTON: That's one of the
19 industries. I work in many different industries,
20 from transportation resources -- wherever our
21 clients wish to invest their money. And the
22 projects have many different configurations, but
23 very often incorporate a component of water
24 management, management of groundwater, protection
25 of groundwater, or assessing environmental
01591
1 impacts.
2 MR. HANDLON: In your report on page 3
3 you talk about the impact of the 1968
4 construction. I think there may have been a slide
5 this afternoon where you had a slide that related
6 to the 1968 construction. And one of the issues I
7 wanted to deal with was specifically on page 3,
8 and this is a factual issue as to location of
9 bedrock in the floodway channel, and your
10 suggestion that there was exposed bedrock
11 approximately 1.5 kilometres south of Spring Hill.
12 That is not in accordance with our information,
13 and I just want to identify you didn't -- the
14 source of your information is Bev Fisher who is an
15 engineer?
16 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, and other local
17 residents.
18 MR. HANDLON: Okay. You didn't go
19 back to any of the engineers or designers of the
20 original floodway or the contractors?
21 MR. CLIFTON: No.
22 MR. HANDLON: You didn't look at any
23 of the plans, or designs for the original
24 floodway, or records relating to whether there was
25 bedrock in that area?
01592
1 MR. CLIFTON: Only as presented in the
2 EIS. There is within the documents, and I can't
3 give you the reference, but within the documents
4 there is a statement that the bedrock surface
5 varies from two metres above the grade line to
6 below it. And I've been -- when I look at the
7 drawings, the location of the site, the location
8 of the area where the bedrock may be above the
9 grade of the low flow channel is not apparent.
10 MR. HANDLON: So, anyway, the source
11 of that information is from Mr. Fisher and some
12 other individuals, but you didn't go back to the
13 actual contractors who were involved in the
14 floodway?
15 MR. CLIFTON: It's third party, it's
16 information given to me by persons who observed
17 themselves.
18 MR. HANDLON: And one of the other
19 points you make in the second paragraph on page 3
20 is the location. I think that was again in your
21 evidence today that location of hydrostatic
22 pressure in the aquifer, you talk about the
23 overburden and the springs that had developed.
24 You state that the number and location of the
25 springs could not be determined from the EIS or
01593
1 from the interrogatories.
2 Were you present, I believe it was
3 yesterday or the day before, where Mr. Smith had
4 gone through a drawing from appendix M, which
5 showed the locations, or general locations of
6 areas of discharge?
7 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, I saw that. I
8 appreciated seeing it in blown-up form on the
9 screen, because for the first time I identified
10 blue arrows and was aware of where they were. But
11 the comment remains valid, that the location and
12 description characterization of them simply is not
13 presented.
14 MR. HANDLON: Sorry, is not which?
15 MR. CLIFTON: Is not adequately
16 presented.
17 MR. HANDLON: Okay. But you know that
18 there was -- certainly that you hadn't seen that
19 drawing before or you hadn't appreciated the
20 significance of it?
21 MR. CLIFTON: I had seen the drawing
22 but could not decipher it. It was unreadable in
23 the documents.
24 MR. HANDLON: So certainly at the
25 present time the general location of the springs
01594
1 is in the material?
2 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
3 MR. HANDLON: And the next paragraph
4 of your report -- just on that point, go back to
5 it. There was an IR request from the
6 municipalities, and it's IR 3A, and it was
7 specifically in relation to this particular point.
8 And if you have it there -- do you have that?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
10 MR. HANDLON: And the response in the
11 second sentence,
12 "Detailed field data on floodway base
13 flow investigations during PDA-1
14 project time frame is contained in
15 appendix M, annex 5. These include
16 identification of observed seepage
17 areas with floodway station and GPS
18 location field water quantity quality
19 measurements and observations
20 periodically from May 2003 to
21 March 2004."
22 I'm curious why, if you had read this answer, why
23 you would say in your report that the information
24 wasn't contained?
25 MR. CLIFTON: Well, certainly, the
01595
1 information provided certainly does not constitute
2 a characterization. And I believe if you read
3 appendix M, annex F, it's an account by a field
4 technologist on the difficulties he was having in
5 making one measurement of stream flow in the
6 channel. So it was far from a comprehensive
7 evaluation of stream flow conditions and the
8 characterization of the springs. And I fully, I
9 accept fully the position reported by Mr. Smith,
10 that it's not simple to do. It's very difficult
11 to do, but it's also very essential.
12 MR. HANDLON: And in appendix M there
13 is text dealing with this particular matter, the
14 groundwater as a section, 8.1.2, groundwater
15 discharge areas. I'll show it to you.
16 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct, it is
17 there. But, again, it recognizes that these
18 conditions exist, but interrogatory IR 3A
19 discusses characterization, and characterization
20 is not a listing of where they are, it is, as it
21 said, geo reference so they can be located on a
22 map, the stratigraphy, the area of extent and the
23 history, the hydraulic characteristics including
24 the water table at the source, formation,
25 permeability and flow and the water quality. That
01596
1 to me would constitute a characterization.
2 MR. HANDLON: Just looking in IR 3A
3 again, it does specifically identify the drawing
4 in appendix M, showing the approximate location of
5 areas where groundwater discharge of a hundred GPM
6 or greater was noted during original construction
7 as published by Render 1970.
8 So I'm curious that this specific
9 answer did direct you to the areas of discharge,
10 and if you were directed to the areas of discharge
11 to the specific drawing, why you would say in your
12 report that the number and location of the springs
13 cannot be determined from the EIS or the
14 interrogatories?
15 MR. CLIFTON: I think, Mr. Handlon, it
16 would be useful for you to view the appendix M,
17 annex F, because that was the form of the document
18 that I had, the PDF document, which was in black
19 and white, where the font size in its reduced form
20 is so small that you can't even recognize the
21 letter of the alphabet, leave alone read the word.
22 MR. HANDLON: Did you ask Mr. Smith,
23 phone him up and ask him to blow it up or to
24 provide you with a better copy or a more detailed
25 copy?
01597
1 MR. CLIFTON: No, I did not. I was --
2 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
3 MR. CLIFTON: I was very proud of
4 myself that I got through all the existing
5 documents in time.
6 MR. HANDLON: So you took the time to
7 say in your report then, instead of asking him for
8 clarification on that, you rather took your time
9 to state, and I quote,
10 "The number and location of the
11 springs could not be determined from
12 the EIS or the interrogatories."
13 But that's incorrect now, you acknowledge that?
14 MR. CLIFTON: Not at all. I could not
15 determine them, until I saw them blown up,
16 magnified 10 or 15 times on the screen, I simply
17 could not identify them. And that is simply again
18 one element of the characterization information we
19 are looking for.
20 MR. HANDLON: And you acknowledge this
21 afternoon, that after seeing it on the screen and
22 having it blown up and in colour, that this
23 statement was incorrect, that it was contained in
24 the material?
25 MR. CLIFTON: That the location is
01598
1 identified, location greater than a hundred
2 gallons per minute.
3 MR. HANDLON: Right. And when I
4 pointed that out to you, you said that that
5 statement that you made in your report was not
6 correct?
7 MR. CLIFTON: The statement I made in
8 my report?
9 MR. HANDLON: Yes.
10 MR. CLIFTON: With respect to?
11 MR. HANDLON: The number and location
12 of the springs could not be determined from the
13 EIS or the interrogatories.
14 MR. CLIFTON: And I would amend that.
15 Number and location of the springs greater than a
16 hundred gallons per minute is known to the
17 proponent, yes.
18 MR. HANDLON: Yes. And in the
19 interrogatory process, you were directed to a
20 drawing that identified the number and location of
21 the springs, correct?
22 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
23 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
24 Now, you say in the next paragraph on
25 page 3, under impact of 1968 construction, about
01599
1 the discharge of water into the floodway, and you
2 have pointed out that East St. Paul and
3 potentially other locations where the floodway did
4 cut through the sand and gravel aquifer could be,
5 water can be obtained through wells on east side
6 of that aquifer, correct, as done by East St.
7 Paul?
8 MR. CLIFTON: East St. Paul advised me
9 that they have made requests repeatedly for
10 groundwater exploration, that they have not been
11 able to get the permission to do. I believe that
12 recently that has been reversed, that they have
13 been given a permit to look at the bedrock, but
14 it's a question best asked East St. Paul.
15 MR. HANDLON: But certainly from a
16 physical ability, if water is being lost into the
17 floodway, other than the issue of getting
18 approvals, that certainly there is the ability to
19 capture that water before it does go into the
20 floodway channel?
21 MR. CLIFTON: On the east side of East
22 St. Paul, or east side of the channel?
23 MR. HANDLON: Of the channel, yes.
24 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, given the authority
25 to construct wells in that area, yes.
01600
1 MR. HANDLON: And we know from the
2 evidence that's been already given that the flow
3 of water in the carbonate aquifer does extend east
4 and there are discharge areas in the Red River
5 itself?
6 MR. CLIFTON: That there are?
7 MR. HANDLON: Discharge areas in the
8 Red River, of that aquifer?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
10 MR. HANDLON: Yes. In your report,
11 section 5, expansion alternatives, and you talk
12 about expansion alternatives. And certainly we
13 know now, and you weren't aware at the time, that
14 in order to gain capacity that the floodway is
15 being widened instead of deepened, so that would
16 be appropriate for the Floodway Authority to have
17 considered that alternative and to move in the
18 direction that they have?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
20 MR. HANDLON: Thank you. In your
21 report at page number 5, it deals with cumulative
22 effects assessment. And you've gone through some
23 of that. I don't intend to engage in a debate
24 with you on that subject, you have set out your
25 argument. If I could, though, other than the
01601
1 argument portion in this section, deal with a
2 comment that's in the second paragraph. You
3 state, and it's about in the middle of the
4 paragraph,
5 "The Commission will be asked to find
6 that this interpretation is not
7 reasonable. The proponent has in
8 essence a non-compliant facility."
9 And then you go on with argument -- seeking
10 approval to expand the facility without mitigating
11 undesirable impacts.
12 Now, you have stated in your evidence
13 today and have on slides non-compliant facility.
14 But in your report itself you say "has in essence"
15 and you've added the words "in essence." I take
16 it that was intentional, those were qualifying
17 words that you had added?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, it is a
19 non-compliant facility.
20 MR. HANDLON: But you added the words
21 "in essence," and what I'm suggesting to you is
22 you added the words "in essence" because you
23 acknowledge that there has not been any actual
24 decision or determination made by any body or any
25 person in authority who has jurisdiction that the
01602
1 facility or the operation is in non-compliance
2 with any laws or regulations?
3 MR. CLIFTON: That is my opinion based
4 on my knowledge of the policies and regulations of
5 Manitoba.
6 MR. HANDLON: But I'm suggesting to
7 you that you added the words "in essence" because
8 you acknowledge there has not been any decision or
9 determination as to non-compliance by any body or
10 person in authority. You acknowledge that?
11 MR. CLIFTON: Not that I'm aware of.
12 MR. HANDLON: Yes. You have given
13 your opinion.
14 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
15 MR. HANDLON: And in the report itself
16 you say "non-compliant facility," yet I don't see
17 you identifying whether it's non-compliant with a
18 policy or a law or a regulation. You don't
19 provide any specifics in your report, do you?
20 MR. CLIFTON: I believe Mr. Currie
21 will speak to that in some detail.
22 MR. HANDLON: Well, I'm not -- you can
23 speak to what's in your report and what's not in
24 your report, and that's what I'm asking you now.
25 I'm not asking for a legal interpretation or a
01603
1 legal opinion.
2 MR. CLIFTON: Well, let me give you
3 the basis of my statement.
4 MR. HANDLON: Well, no. What I'm
5 saying -- I don't mean to talk over you -- is that
6 in your report you talk about a non-compliant
7 facility. But what I'm asking you, you don't
8 specify in what way it's non-compliant, whether
9 it's non-compliant with a policy or a law or a
10 regulation, you don't identify it?
11 MR. CLIFTON: That's true. I'd be
12 glad to elaborate on that, if you wish.
13 MR. HANDLON: No, I just asked you
14 that you don't identify it?
15 MR. CLIFTON: No, I don't.
16 MR. HANDLON: No.
17 THE CHAIRMAN: Would you care to
18 elaborate on that?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Certainly, Mr. Chair.
20 In my view, the existing facility is not compliant
21 with the water management policy in the Province
22 of Manitoba, it's not compliant with the
23 Sustainability Act, and that is the basis.
24 I also was personally under the
25 opinion that it was not compliant with water
01604
1 resource licensing, but I accept the information
2 brought here Monday that the opinion of the
3 province is that the facility does not need a
4 licence. That's a legal question, not one for me
5 to answer. But in my view the facility, as it
6 exists today, does not comply with conservation
7 water management policy and sustainability policy
8 of the Province of Manitoba.
9 MR. HANDLON: And I appreciate that's
10 the evidence that you gave earlier on today, but
11 before you gave that evidence today you hadn't
12 specified what it was that you were saying it was
13 non-compliant with, correct?
14 MR. CLIFTON: That's true.
15 MR. HANDLON: And I believe you
16 indicated in your evidence today, it may be on the
17 slide, you again also referred to non-compliance.
18 You're referring to non-compliance with what you
19 assessed were certain policies, and I believe that
20 you referenced specifically the Water Protection
21 Act?
22 MR. CLIFTON: I read specifically the
23 proposed provisions of the Water Protection Act,
24 but certainly in putting that statement about
25 non-compliance was focusing primarily on the
01605
1 issues regarding water conservation and water
2 management and sustainability.
3 MR. HANDLON: And in order to respond
4 to that, you haven't provided any details of that,
5 correct? How can we respond to that if you don't
6 provide details?
7 MR. CLIFTON: Well, those regulations
8 and statutes are published. The Sustainability
9 Act, I mean, I was reading the same statutes that
10 are available to you.
11 MR. HANDLON: We can read them and
12 make our own observations as well.
13 MR. CLIFTON: Absolutely.
14 MR. HANDLON: In your report at
15 section 7, you deal with groundwater management
16 expertise. Again, you refer to your source,
17 Mr. Fisher, personal communication, and you have
18 stated that there was, I believe your evidence
19 today was there was some indication that there was
20 groundwater contamination from the Red River at
21 some point in time, and you have identified
22 Mr. Fisher as being the source?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. Mr. Fisher was the
24 consultant to the municipality of East St. Paul
25 for a considerable period of time, several decades
01606
1 I understand. And he was the consultant during
2 the period when contamination, as he reported to
3 me in a personal interview, he was the consultant
4 for East St. Paul at a time when contamination of
5 bedrock wells was experienced and that was the
6 impetus for the community to move to a piped water
7 system.
8 MR. HANDLON: In the course of the,
9 prior to this hearing there was -- you were aware
10 of meetings that the municipality representatives
11 had met with the Minister of Water Stewardship,
12 and there was a letter from the Minister of Water
13 Stewardship of February 11, 2005?
14 MR. CLIFTON: I am not aware of that.
15 MR. HANDLON: You are not aware of
16 that?
17 MR. CLIFTON: No.
18 MR. HANDLON: And this isn't related
19 to the Red River contamination, but in that letter
20 of February 11, 2005, the Minister of Water
21 Stewardship states, on the second page in the
22 third paragraph, and I'll read it to you. If you
23 want to see it, that's fine -- sorry on page 1 in
24 the third paragraph, and it's dealing with the
25 issue of aquifer contamination from floodway
01607
1 waters, and he states,
2 "It should be noted that in the years
3 since the existing floodway was
4 constructed, there has not been a
5 single incident of resulting well
6 contamination."
7 Were you aware of that fact?
8 MR. CLIFTON: I was not aware of that,
9 but I would be -- I would wonder at the evidence
10 on which that statement was based.
11 MR. HANDLON: This was the Minister of
12 Water Stewardship.
13 MR. CLIFTON: I can't comment on that.
14 MR. HANDLON: No. And in his letter
15 he goes on, and I'll just ask you if you were
16 aware of this,
17 "Manitoba Water Stewardship intends to
18 initiate a comprehensive study of the
19 two related aquifers in the region.
20 This work will include development of
21 a groundwater three dimensional model
22 that will determine potential effects
23 of additional water withdrawals
24 arising from new developments on
25 existing users and the sustainability
01608
1 of the aquifer system. The model will
2 also be capable of incorporating
3 regional scale water quality issues."
4 Were you aware of that commitment from the
5 Minister?
6 MR. CLIFTON: What is the date of
7 that?
8 MR. HANDLON: February 11.
9 MR. CLIFTON: No, I am not aware of
10 it. It wasn't an input into my deliberations over
11 this.
12 MR. HANDLON: I take it, given your
13 evidence, that you would welcome such a regional
14 study that is described as to the groundwater in
15 these two aquifers?
16 MR. CLIFTON: Clearly -- I mean, that
17 is certainly a technical piece of work that is
18 needed. It doesn't modify the discussion and the
19 conclusions I have reached, but it would provide a
20 framework, I presume, into which the floodway
21 project would fit.
22 MR. HANDLON: Yes, and it would
23 identify other sources of contamination, of water
24 quality considerations other than potentially the
25 floodway itself?
01609
1 MR. CLIFTON: If it is carried far
2 enough, yes.
3 MR. HANDLON: A three dimensional
4 model as described, one would anticipate that that
5 would, correct?
6 MR. CLIFTON: You have much greater in
7 three dimensional models than I.
8 MR. HANDLON: Yes, perhaps I do and
9 perhaps the Ministry of Environment in Ontario
10 does too.
11 MR. CLIFTON: I say that, I don't wish
12 to be facetious, Mr. Handlon, I say that simply
13 because they are one more tool in the tool kit, an
14 important tool, but they are not the solution.
15 They are an important tool in working towards a
16 solution.
17 MR. HANDLON: I appreciate that.
18 And on the same page of your report
19 near the end of the first paragraph of section 70
20 you talk about the Municipality of East St. Paul
21 developing wells into the bedrock aquifer. And
22 you say that although the water is somewhat lower
23 quality, and what you're referring to there is the
24 quality level of the water from the sand and
25 gravel as opposed to the carbonate aquifer,
01610
1 correct?
2 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
3 MR. HANDLON: And you state,
4 "...and perhaps more susceptible to
5 contamination from the floodway."
6 And that's your point, that is an issue of
7 potentially more susceptible to contamination, as
8 you clarified today?
9 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct, although
10 I think based on the evidence I've heard the last
11 day or two, the system there may be strongly
12 interconnected. So sensitivity may be -- there
13 may be sensitivity on both aquifers.
14 MR. HANDLON: Well, we're dealing with
15 your review of, I appreciate, the EIS, and you
16 have also heard some further evidence in the
17 course of this hearing itself. You're referring
18 to Mr. Hayes yesterday?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
20 MR. HANDLON: Now you deal with, in
21 the course of your presentation today and in your
22 report, your discussion of modeling, the numerical
23 mathematical type of modeling. And you indicate
24 that models are,
25 "A numerical model is a mathematical
01611
1 simulation of the geosphere and the
2 behaviour of the groundwater within
3 it. Models are commonly used to
4 understand how a natural groundwater
5 system works, that is to say
6 understand the mechanics of flow and
7 predict the areas of influence."
8 Correct -- that's when you're talking about the
9 models we're talking about here?
10 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
11 MR. HANDLON: And top of page 8 you
12 referred to -- I will get back into that area but
13 if I can skip into section 9.2, regional model,
14 and you're talking about the regional model as
15 contained in the EIS, and you have a criticism,
16 although you say the model is well-defined in the
17 EIS, it has some limitations. And the first
18 limitation you state is that the model models the
19 seepage discharge as occurring uniformly along the
20 channel as opposed to being concentrate in known
21 areas of blowouts and bedrock exposures in the
22 channel.
23 My advice is that there certainly was
24 identification, as we've discussed on the one
25 drawing to appendix M, as to the general location
01612
1 of the groundwater discharge areas. That that was
2 taken, that the model, the regional model did take
3 that into account and did not assume that the
4 seepage occurred uniformly along the channel.
5 So I'm not asking you to agree or
6 disagree with that, but if that is the case, if
7 the model did not assume discharge evenly,
8 uniformly along the channel, but did take into
9 account the specific areas where discharge was
10 identified, that you wouldn't -- then that
11 wouldn't be the same limitation that you thought
12 it had?
13 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct. If that
14 in fact was a discharge condition that was assumed
15 in the model, then that statement would be
16 negated.
17 MR. HANDLON: Yes. And at the top of
18 page 8 you talk about the results of the models,
19 and you make the statement that they must be
20 viewed as qualitative mechanistic rather than
21 quantitative. And I take it that your criticisms
22 of modeling in general, this is the criticism of
23 modeling in general?
24 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct. It is a
25 statement to make the Commission aware of the
01613
1 limitations of modeling. The models have inherent
2 in them, all the models of this type have inherent
3 in them those basic limitations. There is a set
4 of assumptions that go into constructing the
5 models that control the quality of the outputs
6 from the models.
7 MR. HANDLON: And certainly how good a
8 model is a predictor of what will occur is
9 dependent on how the model has developed, the
10 amount of data that's put into the model itself,
11 the calibration of the input data, correct?
12 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
13 MR. HANDLON: And did you study the
14 engineering reports that were put together through
15 the lead of KGS as to the details of all of the
16 data that were included in the modeling and the
17 actual calibration of the model that they
18 developed?
19 MR. CLIFTON: I did. If I can comment
20 on that, the reason for my statement is that the
21 models were calibrated to one set of conditions,
22 what we call a steady state model calibrated to a
23 set of conditions for which monitoring data
24 existed. And they are calibrated to that
25 condition and with the assumptions that go into it
01614
1 and it has limitations. It's not a model that can
2 be used to simulate the hydrograph for the
3 groundwater table in the aquifer for instance.
4 It's a steady state model, it's not a dynamic or a
5 transient model.
6 MR. HANDLON: My advice is that a
7 transient was done on the 1997 flood. Were you
8 aware of that?
9 MR. CLIFTON: But it was based on a
10 calibrated steady state model.
11 MR. HANDLON: Were you aware of the
12 specific data input into the model? Can you tell
13 me what your understanding of that was?
14 MR. CLIFTON: When you say specific
15 data input, there was myriad --
16 MR. HANDLON: Yes. Do you know if
17 there were any recent test holes that were
18 drilled?
19 MR. CLIFTON: The inputs to the model
20 are tabulated and listed in the appendices.
21 MR. HANDLON: Okay. Did you assume
22 that there were not recent test holes that were
23 drilled?
24 MR. CLIFTON: There is a list of test
25 holes reported in appendix Q, I believe, or P, one
01615
1 of the technical particular appendices that list
2 the test holes that were drilled, yes.
3 MR. HANDLON: So you were aware that
4 test holes were drilled specifically for this
5 modeling?
6 MR. CLIFTON: It wasn't clear that it
7 was specific for the modeling.
8 MR. HANDLON: Certainly -- I'll just
9 give you a list of inputs and you tell me if
10 that's appropriate to put the information. My
11 understanding is that the use of information from
12 approximately 800 wells was included -- 8,000, use
13 of holes up to 338 recent test holes and wells
14 with site specific information, including
15 hydraulic conductivity, attendant screen size,
16 detailed existing channel geometry, historical
17 information from Water Stewardship on floodway
18 construction, monitoring and testing, long-term
19 continuous provincial records on groundwater
20 level, monitoring at provincial wells along the
21 floodway, in-house work along the floodway and
22 various groundwater projects. Would you agree
23 with me that's significant data input?
24 MR. CLIFTON: It is the typical data
25 input that one would expect for a regional model.
01616
1 MR. HANDLON: And there is also
2 pre-construction model calibration, it is
3 calibrated with calculated heads meeting
4 acceptable confidence level to the observed
5 regional early 1960s piezometric surface, and that
6 was contained in appendix N; were you aware of
7 that?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
9 MR. HANDLON: Pre-construction.
10 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. I mean, that's
11 reported. My criticism remains that the
12 assumptions, regardless of the data that is
13 utilized, regional models by their very nature
14 model many hundreds of square kilometres of
15 terrain, and the information must be normalized.
16 And if you looked at how the analysts have
17 adjusted properties of soil, hydraulic properties
18 of bedrock and so on, many of the adjustments are
19 made to achieve a result, but aren't necessarily
20 based on the hard data that is brought forward.
21 The input data that you read is very
22 important, it's a very important fundamental
23 input. But then the results very much are
24 dependent on the skill of the analyst and the
25 assumptions they make.
01617
1 MR. HANDLON: I'm going to ask you a
2 simple question and you can agree with me or not
3 agree, and we can call evidence if you don't
4 agree. I'm going to suggest to you that the
5 modeling that was done here was not typical. It
6 wasn't typical because there was much more data
7 that was included in the model than is usually
8 done. Would you agree with or disagree with that?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Do I agree or disagree?
10 The number of wells -- I would agree with that, I
11 would agree with that, because the amount of data
12 available to this model was very considerable
13 because of the number of wells that are available
14 in the region.
15 MR. HANDLON: Are you familiar with
16 the GUDI protocol which I believe was implemented
17 in Ontario?
18 MR. CLIFTON: No, I'm not.
19 MR. HANDLON: In the report provided
20 by Conestoga-Rovers, did you have a chance to
21 review that report?
22 MR. CLIFTON: No, I haven't.
23 MR. HANDLON: In that report they have
24 discussed the GUDI protocol and they have
25 appended, or put into their report, and it's
01618
1 appendix -- I'll have to get the appendix number,
2 I don't have it right here, but it's a protocol
3 for the -- sorry, it's Appendix C2. And it's
4 protocol for a delineation of well head protection
5 areas for municipal groundwater supply wells under
6 direct influence of surface water.
7 Have you heard that phrase GUDI
8 before?
9 MR. CLIFTON: The phrase what, sir?
10 MR. HANDLON: The phrase GUDI?
11 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
12 MR. HANDLON: But you weren't familiar
13 with the protocol itself?
14 MR. CLIFTON: No.
15 MR. HANDLON: And do you have a copy
16 of it in front of you?
17 MR. CLIFTON: Of the protocol?
18 MR. HANDLON: Yes?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
20 MR. HANDLON: Okay. And I'll just
21 read the purpose, and I'm not going to read the
22 whole protocol.
23 "The purpose of this protocol is to
24 identify the Ontario Ministry of
25 Environment requirements regarding
01619
1 delineation of well head protection
2 areas around municipal groundwater
3 supply wells where there may be a need
4 for a restriction on certain types of
5 land use and/or introduction of other
6 measures to prevent and manage risk
7 from human activities relating to the
8 use, manufacture, production, storage
9 and release of biological and chemical
10 contaminants."
11 And in applicability, there's a note that says,
12 "Certificates of approval issued by
13 the Ministry on the basis of the
14 review may include a requirement to
15 undertake a hydrological study in
16 accordance with the Ministry
17 documents, the terms of reference for
18 the hydrological study to examine
19 groundwater sources potentially under
20 the influence of surface water."
21 And then under the requirement sections, if you
22 turn to the next page there is a heading "Capture
23 Zone Delineation Methodology," and they have,
24 "Preferred method: In the majority of
25 cases three dimensional steady state
01620
1 computer models should be used to
2 delineate capture zones. When
3 properly set up and calibrated, these
4 models produce the most realistic time
5 of travel boundaries. It is
6 anticipated that the numerical code
7 that will most frequently be used is
8 mod flow."
9 And then it goes on,
10 "It is necessary to have data
11 regarding well production rate and
12 considerable...",
13 and it goes on to various details.
14 So are you now aware of the fact that
15 the mod flow model is recommended under the GUDI
16 protocol?
17 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, mod flow is
18 generally accepted tool originating out of the
19 U.S., and specified in submittals in the U.S., but
20 it's a generally accepted tool for modeling
21 saturated flow in aquifers. I agree with what you
22 read. I mean, I have no objection to that at all.
23 MR. HANDLON: So if I read in your
24 report that you had some criticism of the mod flow
25 model itself, I misread that?
01621
1 MR. CLIFTON: On the regional model, I
2 have no criticisms at all. I have no criticism of
3 the regional model. I am critical, of course, of
4 the detailed models.
5 MR. HANDLON: But certainly other
6 jurisdictions have recommended this model in order
7 to determine the capture zones for specific
8 municipal wells?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, but that's quite a
10 different application than is being used for
11 details modeling around the channel.
12 MR. HANDLON: Well, I suggest that
13 this model is used to determine the capture, the
14 discharge zone of the floodway. And so certainly
15 as to the model itself, you don't disagree with
16 this protocol when it says that mod flow is a
17 preferred model to be used?
18 MR. CLIFTON: Let me be very clear,
19 Mr. Handlon. I have no objection to utilizing mod
20 flow as the appropriate model in the regional
21 modeling study done. That is the appropriate
22 model. It is not the appropriate model, in my
23 mind, to use for detailed analysis of flow from
24 the floodway channel, largely because that flow
25 occurs in an unsaturated condition, and mod flow
01622
1 has some known shortcomings in dealing with that
2 circumstance.
3 MR. HANDLON: Now, in your report you
4 refer to, page 9, aquifer contamination, and you
5 talked about independent simulation of aquifer
6 response to flood levels. And is this the
7 independent simulation that you have presented
8 here today?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
10 MR. HANDLON: And what model was used?
11 MR. CLIFTON: We used two models, the
12 principal two dimensional one was the CTRAN model,
13 which is manufactured by -- not manufactured, but
14 maintained and developed by Geoslope.
15 MR. HANDLON: Is that included in your
16 slides?
17 MR. CLIFTON: No, it's a commonly --
18 MR. HANDLON: But it wasn't referenced
19 in your slides.
20 MR. CLIFTON: No.
21 MR. HANDLON: But you have now given
22 them to us. And can you provide us with a
23 document?
24 MR. CLIFTON: It's an industry
25 standard model.
01623
1 MR. HANDLON: I was going to move on
2 from that, Mr. Smith has indicated that he is
3 familiar with it. The actual database that was
4 utilized in developing this simulation --
5 MR. CLIFTON: The data that we used in
6 developing the simulation, and we will provide
7 that, but it essentially was the cross-section
8 taken from the technical appendix for the Keewatin
9 bridge site. It was the data from appendix C
10 related to stratigraphy and groundwater conditions
11 for the calibrated case at the Keewatin site.
12 MR. HANDLON: Well, perhaps --
13 MR. CLIFTON: But we can provide the
14 working papers on that.
15 MR. HANDLON: Yes, if you would
16 provide all of the working papers. How quickly
17 can you get those to us?
18 MR. CLIFTON: It would take me a day.
19 They are not resident on my own machine.
20 MR. HANDLON: If I can just state on
21 the record then the type of information we need,
22 as given to me by Mr. Smith, is base geology -- I
23 believe you've given it -- hydraulic conductivity,
24 the boundary conditions, calibration points,
25 calibration, sensitivity, and floodway staging.
01624
1 Would you be able to provide us with that
2 information?
3 MR. CLIFTON: Well, the floodway
4 station is as I have stated.
5 MR. HANDLON: Staging?
6 MR. CLIFTON: Staging -- it's as
7 presented in the documents there. The hydrograph
8 for the floodway is presented in the information I
9 presented today.
10 MR. HANDLON: The source of that
11 information?
12 MR. CLIFTON: Is again taken from the
13 EIS.
14 MR. HANDLON: So you would be able to
15 give that to us later tomorrow? And I take it if
16 there is further information that's requested, if
17 provided through KGS directly or through our
18 office or through your counsel, that you will
19 provide us with all details if it is not contained
20 in the information that you provide?
21 MR. CLIFTON: The information will be
22 forwarded to Mr. Currie.
23 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
24
25
01625
1 (UNDERTAKING # 2: Provided by wayne Clifton -
2 Provide working papers re hydraulic conductivity,
3 boundary conditions, calibration points,
4 calibration, sensitivity, and floodway staging)
5
6 MR. HANDLON: I wonder, Mr. Chairman,
7 if we can take a short break?
8 THE CHAIRMAN: How long did you have
9 in mind, Mr. Handlon?
10 MR. HANDLON: Ten minutes.
11 THE CHAIRMAN: Okay. I have no
12 problem with that. I would suggest that perhaps
13 we might go until 5:30 p.m. because it seems that
14 we may not get through all of this, and I know
15 that at least one of my colleagues has a question
16 or two or three.
17 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
18 THE CHAIRMAN: We'll come back at just
19 after quarter after, please.
20
21 (BRIEF RECESS)
22
23 THE CHAIRMAN: Could we come back to
24 order, please. Order, please. We are ready to
25 proceed. Mr. Handlon.
01626
1 MR. HANDLON: Thank you.
2 Mr. Clifton, in your report itself,
3 and I believe this is in one of your slides, and
4 this is at page 9 of your report, section 9.5.
5 And you say, and this is again one of your points
6 that you have made about looking at the long-term
7 consideration of impacts. In that sentence you
8 say,
9 "Some considerations of time were
10 discussed earlier in this document
11 when it was pointed out that the EIS
12 considered the time to the end of
13 construction, with no longer term
14 consideration of impacts."
15 And I'm advised that certainly in respect to the
16 modeling of the detailed models of surface water
17 intrusion, the detailed models, that certainly the
18 modeling was done in situations looking at a flood
19 event. You are aware of that?
20 MR. CLIFTON: Looking at, I'm sorry?
21 MR. HANDLON: Looking at a flood
22 event?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
24 MR. HANDLON: And so I suggest that
25 when you say that the only considered time to the
01627
1 end of construction -- in fact, the models
2 themselves were based on different scenarios, a
3 scenario when the floodway was inactive and when
4 the floodway was active. So that would be a
5 future event. When that would occur in the
6 future, we don't know. So you'd agree with me
7 that the models themselves certainly modelled,
8 considered future events?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, as I understand the
10 models, interpret the models, they looked at a
11 future flood event and the period one year beyond
12 that -- in other words, to reach the conclusion
13 that the majority of the intruded water would be
14 recovered within a year.
15 MR. HANDLON: Yes. My advice, and
16 we've seen it from the -- that the models talked
17 about future flood events and then continuing
18 monitoring thereafter. So your criticism is that
19 the EIS doesn't look at time effects into the
20 future. And I suggest to you simply that's
21 incorrect. The modeling itself is dealing with
22 future events, not a situation that's static at
23 the end of construction. Would you grant me that,
24 allow me that?
25 MR. CLIFTON: Well, certainly the
01628
1 flood event will take place sometime after
2 construction. But what I would be looking for as
3 an analytical sequence here is frankly to take the
4 hydrograph of the past 35 years and model its
5 impact on the groundwater system. That would be a
6 typical approach. And as a surrogate for future
7 impacts -- use the past 35 years hydrograph as a
8 surrogate for going forward. I didn't see that.
9 I did see the analysis of a future flood event at
10 an undetermined time, and the impacts, the
11 intrusion of water for a short period of time
12 after that flood event. That's what I saw.
13 And so I think the statement is
14 correct. There is not a coherent consideration of
15 long-term impacts of the floodway. They were one
16 of events.
17 MR. HANDLON: I'm just reading
18 appendix P, surface water intrusion, the modeling
19 again.
20 MR. CLIFTON: Appendix papa?
21 MR. HANDLON: Appendix P, page 3-2.
22 "This particle tracking was used to
23 determine the extent of infiltration
24 out of the floodway during floodway
25 filling and the resulting path of the
01629
1 groundwater as the floodway drained.
2 The particle tracking shows the path
3 of the infiltrating water into the
4 overlying unconsolidated deposits
5 (sand and gravel or till) and whether
6 or not the water reaches the bedrock.
7 In all cases following the 1997 flood
8 event, the transient simulations were
9 run until the floodway conditions
10 returned and were held under dry
11 floodway, these conditions to trace
12 the long-term path flow path."
13 So certainly there were consideration in this
14 modeling and in the investigations as to future
15 events, as to the long-term effects?
16 MR. CLIFTON: I disagree with that,
17 because particle tracking is a very crude tool.
18 It does not look at the mixing of the water within
19 the floodway. What it identifies is that if that
20 particular molecule, if you will, of water went
21 into the floodway, is it likely -- or sorry, went
22 into the aquifer, is it likely to be expelled when
23 the floodway drys up or returns to low flow?
24 That's all that tells you. It does
25 not -- it is not an adequate analysis of the
01630
1 migration of flood water into the aquifer.
2 MR. SMITH: Mr. Clifton, if I may ask
3 you, with the particle tracking, the portion that
4 does not go back into the floodway continues to
5 flow outward in this example to the west with
6 time, and would not that particle tracking track
7 the front of the surface water as it continues to
8 move west?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Not necessarily. It
10 depends on the density of the particles that you
11 use in the tracking.
12 MR. SMITH: Well, we're tracking water
13 and we are assuming that it is moving at the speed
14 of the groundwater that's moving with it. So
15 we're not diluting in this case as you would with
16 a contaminant transport.
17 MR. CLIFTON: And that of course is my
18 criticism of the technique. The technique that is
19 required is a transport examination which looks at
20 the dispersion and mixing within the aquifer, and
21 how the aquifer moves in response to the -- sorry,
22 the surface water moves in response to the
23 gradients that are acting on the aquifer.
24 MR. SMITH: Would you not agree that
25 the movement of that front would be more
01631
1 conservative than the dispersion and the dilution
2 of the contaminant transport? In other words, the
3 contaminant is not going to move faster than the
4 front?
5 MR. CLIFTON: In fact the
6 contaminant -- in fact it's the other way around.
7 The contaminant front, because of dispersion and
8 mixing, there is a dilute front that moves ahead
9 of the bulk of the surface water coming in.
10 That's a well-known phenomenon in contaminant
11 transport and exactly the phenomenon that I was
12 trying to illustrate in the cross-sections that I
13 put forward.
14 MR. SMITH: Well, we look forward to
15 receiving the information in that, but I do note
16 in our sensitivity analysis, our front moved ahead
17 to the boundary of the channel within half a year.
18 And in your example, you took 20 years to move 500
19 metres and at that point it was diluted down to 10
20 per cent. So certainly for our purposes,
21 identifying within half a year that there could be
22 an issue at the boundary and flagging a need for
23 monitoring in that area, it would be conservative.
24 MR. CLIFTON: Depends on the -- the
25 word conservative is one that I've steered clear
01632
1 of in these analyses, because what I was
2 evaluating is what are the mechanisms that are
3 active within the aquifer. And the only way -- I
4 have used mod flow, I used mod flow regularly as a
5 tool exactly in the style that is used here.
6 But to evaluate the position of the
7 contaminant plume within the aquifer, the mod flow
8 evaluation is not adequate. It is not adequate.
9 It does not look at the distribution of the
10 surface water within the aquifer, which is the key
11 component which Dr. Hayes, or Mr. Hayes was
12 referring to yesterday. Is there surface water
13 resident within the aquifer after a period of
14 time? If that surface water is resident within
15 the aquifer and continues to migrate within the
16 aquifer, there is a potential human health risk.
17 And contaminant transport modeling is
18 a mechanism that is needed to evaluate that.
19 That, of course, was key to the criticism that I
20 put forward. I did not see that type of modeling.
21 Mod flow gives an indication, it does not give
22 nearly the precision of answers of a tool such at
23 MT3D, which is a companion software to mod flow.
24 MR. HANDLON: Perhaps we can leave the
25 discussion on modeling until we receive the
01633
1 background information of Mr. Clifton in this
2 area, because this is an important part of the
3 consideration here of his evidence. And of
4 course, we will be dealing in re-examination with
5 some of these issues that have come up during the
6 course of presentations that certainly were not
7 contained in reports, and reports received very
8 late.
9 I'm near the end of my questioning,
10 but certainly as I indicated earlier on, we would
11 want Mr. Clifton to come back. I think it's only
12 fair to allow us the opportunity to look at the
13 modeling that he has done, to look at all the
14 information, to be able to analyze the new
15 assessments and conclusions -- maybe not new
16 conclusions, but elaboration on conclusions that
17 he's provided in these slides, particularly on
18 these technical areas.
19 So I would close on that. There are a
20 few questions on one of the slides that were
21 presented this afternoon dealing with the issue of
22 the assessment, environmental assessment. And to
23 facilitate this, I would ask Mr. Osler, he had a
24 few questions of Mr. Clifton, and if that would be
25 appropriate, he could put those questions and then
01634
1 we could sort of conclude our examination for
2 today.
3 THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, that's very
4 reasonable. Mr. Handlon, how long will you, or
5 obviously the engineering consultants need to
6 examine Mr. Clifton's modeling data.
7 MR. HANDLON: As to length of time,
8 once it's received to be able to assess it in
9 order to properly -- if I could just confer with
10 Mr. Smith on that.
11 Mr. Chairman, if it's received by
12 Friday, or on Friday, they should be able to get
13 that done for Tuesday, so we're looking at mid
14 next week.
15 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Clifton, are you
16 available to return to Winnipeg mid next week?
17 MR. CLIFTON: Mr. Chair, my next week
18 is very difficult. I am scheduled at another
19 hearing at the middle of the week, at the same
20 time, so it would be --
21 THE CHAIRMAN: Beginning of the
22 following week, Monday, March 5th?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Perhaps, I would have to
24 check. I don't have my itinerary with me, but I
25 would have to check that.
01635
1 THE CHAIRMAN: Pardon me, that's the
2 7th of March I'm told.
3 MR. CLIFTON: I will advise Mr. Currie
4 as soon as I have my schedule.
5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
6 MR. HANDLON: Just Mr. Osler has some
7 questions. And if Mr. Clifton has the EIS in
8 front of him, I think it might help.
9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Mr. Osler.
10 MR. J. OSLER: It is one of those very
11 rare opportunities where I actually get to ask
12 questions, so I'll be very delicate and hopefully
13 very brief.
14 Mr. Clifton, when we started the
15 presentation this afternoon, you mentioned that
16 you had had an opportunity to reread through
17 chapter 2 in some detail, based on what you were
18 hearing throughout the hearing. And in fact, you
19 actually included a particular figure out of
20 chapter 2 in your description of, I guess you
21 refer to it in section 6 of your evidence as an
22 impact ranking system. And I believe the actual
23 figure reference in the EIS is figure 2.3-1,
24 that's found on page 2-14 of the EIS.
25 MR. CLIFTON: Just to be clear,
01636
1 Mr. Osler, I think my evidence was that I had an
2 opportunity to reread section 2 prior to
3 submitting the report, not following information
4 at the hearings. I haven't had an opportunity to
5 reread it since I've been at the hearings.
6 MR. J. OSLER: Fair enough. It does
7 refer to, the impact ranking system uses a
8 combination of severity, duration and aerial
9 extent to adjudicate whether mitigation is
10 required.
11 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
12 MR. J. OSLER: And you describe them
13 as duration being short-term or long-term, and you
14 describe magnitude and geographic extent. And you
15 said this defines the mitigation requirements and
16 that was in fact inadequate for the purpose of the
17 EA. I don't mean to paraphrase you, if it's not
18 exactly the quotation, fair enough.
19 MR. CLIFTON: I think my comment was
20 that the ranking system is very clear, and the
21 assessment and mitigation presented in the EIA is
22 consistent with the ranking system that was
23 proposed.
24 MR. J. OSLER: On page 2-2 of the EIS,
25 under the description of overview of approach, the
01637
1 EIS lays out, and actually Mr. Rempel described in
2 his presentation last week the EIS assessment
3 process, and it was described as including five
4 key steps, the first step of that being scoping.
5 The step includes identification of issues of
6 concern related to the project, selecting
7 environmental components to be examined in the
8 EIA, and identifying potential sources and
9 pathways of those effects from the project to each
10 environmental component.
11 It goes on to describe that for the
12 floodway expansion EIS, the EIS guidelines provide
13 considerable initial guidance as to scoping,
14 including an initial basic environmental
15 components list to be examined.
16 Do you see that, sir?
17 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
18 MR. J. OSLER: The second step of that
19 environmental assessment process is the analysis
20 of the effects of those various environmental
21 components. It involves collection of baseline
22 data, and there's been considerable discussion on
23 that today, for each one of these environmental
24 components, and assessing the effects of the
25 project as well as all selected other actions such
01638
1 as cumulative effects on the selected
2 environmental components.
3 Do you see that, sir?
4 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
5 MR. J. OSLER: The third step being
6 the identification of mitigation. This step sets
7 out recommended mitigation measures.
8 The fourth step, sir, is the
9 evaluation of significance, describing residual
10 effects. This step evaluates the significance of
11 residual effects, that is adverse effects after
12 consideration of full recommended mitigation
13 likely to result from the project. This
14 evaluation of the significance must be carried out
15 in accordance with the Canadian Environmental
16 Assessment Act and may involve comparing such
17 residual effects against thresholds for an
18 environmental component.
19 Do you see that, sir? It is on the
20 top of page 2-3?
21 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
22 MR. J. OSLER: The final step in the
23 process being that of follow-up and monitoring.
24 That step sets out recommended monitoring and
25 effect management measures.
01639
1 If you proceed down that page over to
2 the following page -- that you'll see if you
3 continue through to figure 2.3-1 which falls
4 under, it's on page 2-14 but it is embedded in the
5 section referred to in 2-2.3, determining
6 significance of residual environmental effects.
7 Do you see that, sir?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
9 MR. J. OSLER: And in fact, if you
10 looked at page 2-13, right in the middle, it says,
11 "As set out in the EIS guidelines
12 (section 7) the following criteria are
13 used in the EIS to evaluate the
14 significance of adverse residual
15 environmental effects."
16 And then it goes on to proceed to provide a bunch
17 of bullets such as the nature of the effect, the
18 magnitude, the duration of the effect, the
19 frequency, the reversibility of the effect,
20 temporal boundaries such as when the effect would
21 occur, spatial boundaries, ecological context, and
22 non-compliance with legislation, regulations and
23 policies.
24 Do you see that, sir?
25 MR. CLIFTON: Um-hum.
01640
1 MR. J. OSLER: The next sentence
2 starts,
3 "With respect to the assessment of the
4 significance for biophysical
5 effects...",
6 those are contained within chapters 5, 6 and 7 of
7 the EIS,
8 "...three key initial assessment
9 components are used as follows."
10 And then proceeds to describe three components,
11 duration, magnitude and geographical extent.
12 Do you see that, sir?
13 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
14 MR. J. OSLER: And in fact when you
15 look at figure 2.3-1, it is a representation of
16 magnitude, duration and geographical extent, such
17 that you described in section 3 of your report.
18 If you look on page 2-14, the middle
19 paragraph starts,
20 "A matrix that generally illustrates
21 the differences between insignificant
22 and potentially significant effects on
23 biophysical environments was based on
24 duration, magnitude and geographical
25 extent...",
01641
1 as you have described. While this matrix guides
2 the assessment of significance, the assessment
3 also considers other components such as frequency,
4 does not occur more than once, confidence, how
5 confident are we that the degree of the impact,
6 and environmental component specific
7 characteristics such as resilience and ecological
8 context. And in fact, if you looked at the figure
9 2.3-1, you'll see in the note, note 1 reads,
10 "In addition to the above, effects are
11 assessed in terms of frequency of
12 occurrence, confidence in the
13 assessment, resilience and ecological
14 content."
15 The third paragraph on page 2-14 --
16 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Osler, you are
17 reading a lot of information into record, and it
18 sounds more like a debate or argument than
19 cross-examination.
20 MR. J. OSLER: Thank you, sir, for
21 bringing me back to an actual question.
22 The information is there, sir. In
23 section 6 of your report, you refer to an impact
24 ranking system. Would that be potentially phrased
25 more appropriately as potentially significant
01642
1 biophysical effects on the environment, such as
2 the determination of its significance and not as
3 an impact ranking system?
4 MR. CLIFTON: Perhaps. I was, as I
5 read that, the paragraph immediately above was
6 what struck me. It said, while this matrix guides
7 the assessment of significance, and that's fairly
8 clear, it was fairly clear to me, it guides the
9 impact. In fairness, it says there is other
10 factors, but it's a guide to the significance.
11 And it particularly addressed issues of magnitude
12 and duration. That's the objective of the matrix,
13 I take it, was to show how magnitude and duration
14 were interconnected or interrelated in the
15 assessment process.
16 MR. J. OSLER: It doesn't, therefore,
17 exist as a means of determining whether or not an
18 impact requires mitigation?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Well, it certainly says
20 it's a guide.
21 MR. J. OSLER: Sir, but the discussion
22 in terms of this figure being used as a
23 determinant, to aid in the determination of
24 significance and a significant effect, being one
25 is -- the determination is rendered as I described
01643
1 in the process of the environmental assessment, as
2 the determination of significance occurs after the
3 application of all recommended mitigation.
4 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. I mean, all of the
5 other things, the things that you read into the
6 record were the preamble to, I took it as sort of
7 an instruction or a guidance to user, a guidance
8 to the reader in how impacts were assessed. And
9 it's clear, impacts were to be assessed after all
10 mitigation was applied, that they were to consider
11 other things like frequency and so on. But the
12 guide, I mean, it's there in black and white, and
13 in a fairly definitive matrix, that this was the
14 guide to impact assessment. Considering all those
15 other things, of course, but this is a guide under
16 which impacts would be assessed and mitigated.
17 MR. J. OSLER: I guess we had some
18 debate earlier on last week about the difficulty
19 in the use of words. And I guess the issue that I
20 ask of you is do those characteristics, as you
21 have seen them and as you have assessed them in
22 terms of an impact ranking system, are they to be
23 applied against the determination of significance
24 of the effect, or are they to be used in the
25 identification of the requirement for mitigation
01644
1 of an environmental effect?
2 MR. CLIFTON: Well, to me they are one
3 in the same. If they are significant, they
4 require mitigation. If they are not significant,
5 they don't require mitigation. So I as I read
6 that, in my own mind, I couldn't differentiate
7 between the two components.
8 MR. J. OSLER: Sir, if we move to an
9 interrogatory response RM3 IR2. Do you have it,
10 sir?
11 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
12 MR. J. OSLER: On line 28 of page 1,
13 it describes in response to a question on
14 cumulative effects assessment that the scope of
15 CEAA, that's the Canadian Environmental
16 assessment -- sorry, cumulative effects
17 assessment, as described on page 2-8 of the EIS
18 notes that cumulative environmental effects must
19 qualify as environmental effects of the project as
20 defined in the Canadian Environmental Assessment
21 Act. Would you agree with that statement, sir?
22 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
23 MR. J. OSLER: It further goes on to
24 say,
25 "Further, cumulative environmental
01645
1 effects must be likely to result from
2 the project when they are anticipated
3 to occur in combination with other
4 projects or activities that have or
5 will be carried out."
6 Is that a statement that you would professionally
7 agree with as well?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
9 MR. J. OSLER: If we were to turn that
10 page over, on line 1 it says, with respect to past
11 activities the CEAA practitioner's guide notes,
12 "In practice past actions often become
13 part of the existing baseline
14 conditions. It is important, however,
15 to ensure that the effects of these
16 actions are recognized."
17 And does that form the basis of how you described
18 your positions today, sir?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. I think the key
20 there is -- let me elaborate on this concept of
21 evolving baseline. It's certainly apparent that
22 the biophysical baseline has changed from 1968 and
23 evolves and perhaps continues to evolve. My
24 interpretation of the EIS was that the baseline
25 had evolved to the start of the expansion.
01646
1 I realize, listening to the
2 discussions presented, that it's the intent of the
3 proponent that that baseline will continue to
4 evolve for centuries into the future because of
5 the presence of the floodway. And I must say that
6 is a very, very unique interpretation of
7 cumulative effects.
8 MR. J. OSLER: I have one last
9 question and then I will be done. Thank you.
10 You noted near the end of your
11 presentation this afternoon that it is normal
12 practice of impact assessment to consider and
13 address past impacts and that the net effects of
14 the project must be considered in this assessment.
15 When you made that statement, the
16 question I have for you, does that -- was your
17 determination that impact assessment has to
18 consider and address past impacts, would that
19 extend to all the various environmental components
20 that we have described within this EIS?
21 MR. CLIFTON: I think the statement
22 was that they must consider the net effects of the
23 project in its entirety, the net effect. And the
24 short answer to your -- I am specifically dealing
25 with groundwater, so I must make it clear that I
01647
1 haven't dealt with other environmental components.
2 But it is difficult to anticipate -- go back one
3 step. In view of the potential pathway into the
4 aquifer and the potential results, just to
5 adequately consider the impact on human health and
6 impact on environmental quality, particularly
7 quality of groundwater, I do not see how that is
8 possible to do without considering the history of
9 the project, and without considering and
10 projecting that history into the future. As you
11 know, that's common practice now in most -- well,
12 certainly in many, many, many impact assessments
13 because of issues like climate change, if you're
14 dealing in the radio industries, the uranium
15 industry and others, you must project well into
16 the future.
17 I frankly expected to see the same
18 kind of projection of future impacts in the
19 groundwater section, and I didn't see it. It's a
20 common analytical and assessment technique,
21 generally accepted practice. And I simply didn't
22 see it.
23 MR. J. OSLER: So that in terms of
24 addressing past impacts of the existing floodway,
25 that the Floodway Expansion Environmental Impact
01648
1 Statement should address, in your view, other
2 environmental components that had been identified
3 within the EIS?
4 MR. CLIFTON: Remember, I'm dealing
5 again only with groundwater. In my view, the
6 impact assessment must demonstrate how the
7 groundwater system works and how it will work into
8 the future. And it's -- well, both model the
9 impacts that have occurred, and I think you've
10 made good progress on that, but then projecting
11 that into the future, looking at growth, looking
12 at issues of potential migration, that is the
13 basis of the comments, the basis of my comment.
14 I'm not sure I answered your question, I
15 apologize. I got rambling a bit.
16 MR. J. OSLER: I guess another way of
17 looking at it is if we were to do it, if this was
18 to address past impacts of groundwater alone,
19 should it not in fact be addressing all past
20 impacts on all environmental components contained
21 within the EIS. That was the nature of the
22 question.
23 MR. CLIFTON: I can't give you advice
24 on that because I simply haven't looked at that.
25 MR. J. OSLER: Good. Thank you very
01649
1 much.
2 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
3 MR. HANDLON: Those would be our
4 questions for today.
5 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
6 Mr. Webster.
7 MR. WEBSTER: Yes, thank you,
8 Mr. Chairman.
9 I have some questions of a slightly
10 different nature but the same topic. We
11 addressed, first of all this afternoon, the issue
12 of the unconfined aquifer, that's the Birds Hill
13 sand and gravel aquifer. And one of the things
14 I'd like to establish is, to the best of your
15 knowledge, and you may or may have this knowledge,
16 but to the best of your knowledge was that
17 excellent quality water being lost before the
18 original floodway was constructed?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Well, that water would
20 flow -- flowed through to the Red River. Because
21 the travel distance is longer and gradients would
22 be smaller, I presume there was less being lost.
23 And the water balance -- have to look at the water
24 balance. But, yes, that water ended up in the Red
25 River. It obviously gave some opportunity during
01650
1 that longer flow path to be exploited and captured
2 and used and so on -- they are available now.
3 MR. WEBSTER: I don't want to belabour
4 this particular part of my questioning, but the
5 point is that the floodway construction caused a
6 release of some of that water, which is now a
7 subject of controversy because in fact it's being
8 lost into the floodway at a rate that it wasn't
9 being lost before.
10 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
11 MR. WEBSTER: That's a water quantity
12 question.
13 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
14 MR. WEBSTER: Now, is there any risk
15 from the floodway construction or the floodway
16 expansion to the quality of that water in that
17 aquifer?
18 MR. CLIFTON: At present, no. But
19 with time and with growth, one would expect the
20 same kinds of reversals of gradients from the
21 channel as has occurred around the Red River, that
22 if the pumping takes place, lowers the water table
23 in the aquifer, the same pathway for intrusion
24 would exist as exists around the Red River.
25 MR. WEBSTER: And that is because of
01651
1 entrance through, where the sand and gravel
2 aquifer is intercepted by the floodway, that the
3 water level would have to be drawn down to such an
4 extent that it would be below the floodway at that
5 point?
6 MR. CLIFTON: Yes, at flood stage.
7 MR. WEBSTER: But in terms of the
8 current status and recharge, is the floodway or
9 the expansion likely to affect the quality of the
10 water in that aquifer?
11 MR. CLIFTON: During flood, but not
12 during, not when the floodway is dry.
13 MR. WEBSTER: Given that the head is
14 above the floodway, considerably, is it likely to
15 affect that particular aquifer during a flood?
16 MR. CLIFTON: Above the base of the
17 floodway, the head is above the base of the
18 floodway but it is below flood stage.
19 MR. WEBSTER: But that's the key
20 question in your mind as to whether it will be
21 contaminated or not at the floodway?
22 MR. CLIFTON: Right.
23 MR. WEBSTER: I think we can probably
24 leave that there and decide whether the levels are
25 above or below as we look at it in detail.
01652
1 I really would like to go along to the
2 carbonate aquifer and ask you, since that's been
3 the basis of much of the questioning this
4 afternoon -- first of all, because we are talking
5 about loss of water through springs and the effect
6 of the drawdown of that aquifer, which is much
7 more extensive --
8 MR. CLIFTON: I'm sorry, Dr. Webster,
9 I may have misunderstood your previous question.
10 You were talking specifically about the unconfined
11 aquifer?
12 MR. WEBSTER: I was.
13 MR. CLIFTON: Now I would say, yes,
14 that's a site specific, that depends on conditions
15 on any locale and effectiveness of the cutoffs and
16 so on. I agree that if the water levels in the
17 aquifer are above flood stage, the risk is very
18 minimal to non-existent.
19 MR. WEBSTER: Thank you. But much of
20 what you said this afternoon had to do with what
21 would happen if water use in the aquifer, in the
22 carbonate aquifer were to be drawn down through
23 extra use. So, in fact, during a flood, it would
24 be easier for flood water to enter, and perhaps
25 even without a flood it would be possible for
01653
1 water to enter through those springs. Is that
2 where you were going with that?
3 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct.
4 MR. WEBSTER: Yes. And a gradient
5 reversal is purely and simply caused by the
6 pressure of the aquifer, the confined aquifer, as
7 opposed to the pressure from the water sitting in
8 the floodway or the lower channel?
9 MR. CLIFTON: It's a relationship
10 between the two. If the head in the aquifer is
11 lower than the head in the floodway, than the
12 water level in the floodway, the water will
13 migrate into the aquifer until the pressure
14 equalizes. And then when the floodway drains out,
15 the flow will reverse.
16 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. So we come to the
17 question of those springs, and those, essentially
18 those connections between the carbonate aquifer
19 and the floodway. And there are two kinds that
20 you have described. One of them is directly from
21 the bedrock into the channel where bedrock is
22 exposed?
23 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
24 MR. WEBSTER: And the other one is
25 from the bedrock through the till where it has
01654
1 been the blowout of the sort you're talking about?
2 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Now, can you describe in
4 each of those two cases whether in fact the
5 aquifer can be resealed, and if so, how?
6 MR. CLIFTON: With great difficulty.
7 Personally, that was what the rationale behind my
8 recommendation to ALARA, to strive to achieve the
9 protection, as much protection as reasonably
10 achievable and do it in a fashion that is
11 affordable.
12 Can it be resealed? I personally
13 doubt it, but there are other mechanisms that can
14 be used to provide protection, management
15 techniques, hydro-dynamic protection where you use
16 pumping systems and management of groundwater
17 levels to manage the gradients. That really is a
18 question for the project team, evaluate the
19 options apply ALARA, hence our recommendation that
20 that become a condition of approval.
21 MR. WEBSTER: I see. Now, going
22 further down my questions here. Would a compacted
23 clay liner or a geotextile liner in the floodway
24 enable some kind of separation that would work
25 between the channel and the groundwater we have
01655
1 just been talking about, from a carbonate aquifer?
2 MR. CLIFTON: Only if it were combined
3 with some mechanism of controlling the water
4 pressure under the floodway.
5 MR. WEBSTER: Because it itself would
6 be subject to blowout.
7 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
8 MR. WEBSTER: So it takes some special
9 technology to do that?
10 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
11 MR. WEBSTER: And does that exist?
12 MR. CLIFTON: At a very substantial
13 cost. It's frankly probably not affordable.
14 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. So I guess what
15 you recommend is that we try not to go there in
16 the first place?
17 MR. CLIFTON: Well, again, it comes
18 back to ALARA. If you put all -- I mean, the
19 technique for doing this is to put the laundry
20 list of possible techniques, including a liner,
21 and then carrying out a value engineering and
22 better feasibility, engineering feasibility
23 exercise and knocking those off the list that
24 clearly are not contenders and evaluating those
25 that could be contenders. It's a well-established
01656
1 engineering process to handle those issues.
2 MR. WEBSTER: So given that the
3 current floodway already has some of these
4 connections between the carbonate aquifer and the
5 floodway, and if the expansion can be done without
6 making that any worse, what do you recommend we
7 do?
8 MR. CLIFTON: Well, the issue of
9 conservation and protection is fundamental. And
10 it's not one universal solution. There are quite
11 a number of springs. There may be a solution that
12 applies at several, another solution at several
13 others. There may be some that simply cannot be
14 remediated and have to be monitored over the long
15 term. It's not going to be a one size fits all
16 solution by any means.
17 MR. WEBSTER: So it's a site specific
18 sort of a thing?
19 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
20 MR. WEBSTER: I'd love to discuss with
21 you a little bit about how that would take place,
22 but clearly that's more than we have time for this
23 afternoon. Maybe we can do that another time.
24 We have talked about the fact that
25 water is being lost, and I believe in this case we
01657
1 go back to the sand and gravel aquifer, although
2 the supplies to the carbonate aquifer too, so I'd
3 like you to deal with them separately. How could
4 that lost water be recaptured? We've talked about
5 whether it should be licensed or not earlier in
6 the hearing and today. How could that lost water
7 flow be recaptured and made use of, rather than
8 just letting it run away?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Well, in my view it
10 isn't going to happen tomorrow morning. It's
11 going to take a longer term management plan to
12 identify what techniques are there. And it may be
13 that the most logical solution is to leave it flow
14 at some periods of time, and other periods of time
15 that it be pumped as a resource, that it be used
16 by the municipalities, be used by industry. It
17 may be that in the long term, some portions of the
18 aquifer may be designated an industrial supply.
19 That's happened in other aquifer management
20 projects that we've been involved with, where the
21 quality seemed to deteriorate to a point where it
22 is not acceptable without treatment.
23 So it would involve recovering as much
24 water as quickly as possible and putting it to an
25 economic use, progressively over a period of
01658
1 years. I believe that's probably a major
2 component of the work. While at the same time
3 introducing the aquifer protection measures that
4 are required to keep contamination from migrating
5 in there.
6 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. Now I'd like to
7 go to the area of groundwater contamination,
8 because I think we've found a difference between
9 what you've said and what the Floodway Authority
10 has been telling us is a question of how much, how
11 fast, how long, how far sort of thing. First of
12 all, the plumes that you have described to us in
13 your diagrams had a very large vertical component.
14 Was that something that was real or was that for
15 the purpose of the diagram?
16 MR. CLIFTON: It's a numerical
17 simulation of reality, that it very much depends
18 on the algorithm that was being used. That was my
19 point. These are tools to understand how
20 processes may be happening in nature, but it's
21 extremely important that there be a ground
22 truthing system that actually identifies what's
23 happening in nature, through monitoring, and
24 upgrading and updating the models progressively
25 through the years.
01659
1 This isn't a circumstance that will be
2 remediated in one or two years. It's taken 40 or
3 50 years to get here. It will be remediated
4 progressively with time, but the important thing
5 is to set in place a program to start that
6 remediation.
7 MR. WEBSTER: Specifically what I'm
8 interested in is, if you look at your overheads,
9 pages 20, 21, 22, 23, all have cross-sections of
10 the floodway showing a contaminant plume going
11 down below the floodway channel. And what I'm
12 asking about is the fact -- the issue in my mind
13 is that we have a shape to that movement of water
14 into the ground, and then we have vertical bars
15 going down. And they seem to be vertical bars
16 except in the middle it seems to be more of a cone
17 or a V.
18 Now, is there some significance to the
19 fact they go down off the chart?
20 MR. CLIFTON: No. This was the base
21 of the modeling, assumed to be the base of the
22 permeable zone in the aquifer. And this --
23 modelers often refer to this exercise as geo
24 fantasy, because it depicts -- this assumes a
25 blowout or a high permeability zone in the base of
01660
1 the channel, and the water, the surface water is
2 being forced down by the head in the channel
3 during flood stage. And then because of the
4 properties that are assigned, it simply moves
5 laterally within the aquifer in response to
6 gradients.
7 It is cartoon, a depiction of what
8 happens in nature. Now it's cartoon that's based
9 on physics and mathematics, so it's somewhat of a
10 rational cartoon. But the point I was making
11 earlier, we should not take this as being the hard
12 truth. It is an understanding that this mechanism
13 exists, that water could potentially move down
14 through the floodway, move laterally into the
15 aquifer and reach a receptor, reach a well that's
16 being used.
17 Identifying that the mechanism exists
18 then requires more detail, more investigation,
19 harder, more rigorous evaluation. This evaluation
20 was produced in probably four or five days of
21 work. It will require orders of magnitude more
22 than that. It will require years of work to
23 really identify how this aquifer is working.
24 MR. WEBSTER: Okay. My questions have
25 to do with the way it's represented on the diagram
01661
1 here. And the models that were shown to us by the
2 Floodway Authority showed permeation of the water
3 into the ground but had a boundary as to where
4 that water had stopped moving. The implication
5 from your diagram is that that water will
6 penetrate all the way through that carbonate
7 aquifer to the bottom of the aquifer.
8 MR. CLIFTON: Yes. And that was the
9 basis of the discussion between Mr. Smith and
10 myself, is that in the analysis they had
11 presented, the water, they track a particle of
12 water in the surface, it moves in the ground, and
13 the shape of where those particles are forms I'll
14 say a blob of water in here, for want of a
15 different term. And it is simply a different
16 formulation of the models. KGS used one
17 formulation of a model, I used a different one.
18 We're going to argue over how many angles are on
19 the head of that pin, but we both believe the
20 models are valid.
21 And what they are both demonstrating
22 is potential mechanisms. Neither of us can verify
23 that that is in fact what is happening in nature,
24 but they are making reasonable assumptions. What
25 I have identified is there is potential for this
01662
1 kind of an effect to happen, using the same kinds,
2 using the same assumptions but different methods
3 of analysis than the proponent used.
4 MR. WEBSTER: And what we're going to
5 establish when we talk about this again is how
6 these correspond or don't correspond in terms of
7 looking at the models in terms of each other's
8 criteria?
9 MR. CLIFTON: Yes.
10 MR. MOTHERAL: Just while we're on
11 that subject too, and we do have a challenge, the
12 Commission does have a challenge here deciphering
13 information. And Barrie is very interested in the
14 technical models. I'm more of a realist -- I'm
15 sorry, that's a comment.
16 I don't know if this is the right
17 opportunity, but maybe I can ask it of the
18 municipalities at some time. But what the past
19 record has been on pollution -- and we know our
20 models are always on potential. I would like to
21 know if there is some model that can tell you
22 exactly how much potential? Is this a 99 percent,
23 or this is a 1.3 or is this a .005?
24 MR. CLIFTON: I think that comes
25 back -- I think the answer to your questions lies
01663
1 in the recommendation that we provided earlier on.
2 It comes back again to evaluation of cumulative
3 effects. The position of the municipalities is
4 that the floodway expansion cannot be considered
5 in isolation. That in order to evaluate the
6 potential migration of -- the potential health
7 effects of the migration of water into the
8 aquifer, that you must model the history of the
9 floodway, and look at the pathway and how many
10 potential wells, how many receptors may receive
11 water. If the answer is zero, that's great, it
12 goes away. If it is 1 per cent risk, 10 per cent
13 risk, it will be a risk assessment process that's
14 commonly used in environmental management systems.
15 The position of the municipalities is that that
16 evaluation should be carried out, a full health
17 risk assessment which looks at the history to date
18 and projects that history into the future. And if
19 there is a 50 year free ride, that's the answer,
20 that you wouldn't expect any contamination to
21 reach any receptors for 50 years.
22 Then the question is if it is likely
23 there in smaller doses now -- that's the purpose
24 of the risk assessment. What might happen, what
25 is the probability of it happening and what are
01664
1 the consequences. That really is the purpose of
2 risk assessment.
3 MR. WEBSTER: Carrying on from the
4 question we just had, there are wells out there
5 that have been used to monitor water quality to
6 the west of the floodway, which is where your --
7 which is I presume the direction that the water is
8 likely to move in if the water does get into the
9 carbonate aquifer. Is there data that shows, to
10 your knowledge, that there has been contamination
11 of that aquifer by previous floods?
12 MR. CLIFTON: Not that I'm aware of.
13 The only information that I'm aware of of well
14 contamination is the information that Peter Hayes
15 presented yesterday where fecal matter had been
16 identified in some wells, I'm not sure how far
17 from the floodway, that's the only one that I'm
18 aware of.
19 MR. WEBSTER: That's where I'm going
20 with this. I want you to describe to us what an
21 adequate monitoring system would be for the
22 baseline and followup would be, and I am thinking
23 about where the wells ought to go and how often
24 they ought to be sampled?
25 MR. CLIFTON: This relates back to my
01665
1 discussion of characterization of springs in the
2 floodway. While we have had the discussion
3 regarding characterization of the springs and the
4 appropriateness of the models, the models are very
5 important tools to identify what the flow patterns
6 for water might be from the floodway. Fundamental
7 input is where are the springs, they are the weak
8 points that allow water to flow into the aquifer,
9 or may allow water to flow into the aquifer, I
10 don't want to leave the idea that it is happening.
11 I think I am reminded again the word potential is
12 the correct word. But the blowouts in the springs
13 are areas where surface water may get into the
14 aquifer. The models will demonstrate -- given
15 proper characterization, the models will
16 demonstrate where those plumes may migrate to.
17 Those pathways are the ones that need to be
18 monitored in the long term with a comprehensive
19 monitoring program that's in place prior to the
20 start of construction. And that's an essential
21 component. It should go now, because if there is
22 any contamination detected, it should be known
23 prior to the start of construction of the
24 expansion.
25 MR. WEBSTER: I would like to know
01666
1 then how many wells and where ought they to go in
2 terms of being next to the channel, or within some
3 distance from the channel, or where would you
4 recommend that those wells be put, in terms of
5 high priority and medium priority?
6 MR. CLIFTON: Again, that will come
7 from the modeling, but it will be many more than
8 there are now. There will be indicated -- at
9 minimum there will be one at a major spring area,
10 and typically they are aligned in first and second
11 lines of defence. There would be a line of
12 monitors at the top of the floodway, perhaps at
13 the property lines, safe from flood damage.
14 Another line of monitors some distance back. But
15 that will come from the technical studies,
16 technical groundwater studies that incorporate the
17 details of those springs. The analysts, the
18 hydrogeologists can answer that question and can
19 design a rational monitoring system that's based
20 on actual aquifer properties and where the
21 receptors are. You must monitor ahead of the
22 receptors, because the water that's coming out of
23 the floodway must be monitored well in advance of
24 it reaching any potential groundwater users. So
25 many factors: Where are the springs, where can
01667
1 you safely install, where are the groundwater
2 users, and more than one array of monitoring.
3 This is a very, very major project with a
4 significant interface with the groundwater system.
5 If it were an industrial project of the same
6 magnitude it would have a very onerous groundwater
7 monitoring program.
8 MR. WEBSTER: Would it be your
9 recommendation that there be wells other than
10 vertical wells? Should there be wells that go
11 down from the side of the floodway but on an angle
12 under the channel?
13 MR. CLIFTON: That's very difficult.
14 I would probably more strongly favour a
15 comprehensive monitoring program focused on the
16 springs, so you can see what quality of water is
17 coming out of those springs on an ongoing basis.
18 And Mr. Smith has pointed out how difficult it is
19 to handle that. But they are the key, they are
20 the canaries, they are the mind canaries that give
21 the first indicator.
22 MR. WEBSTER: One final question, and
23 that has to do with the question of cumulative
24 effects that we talked about several days over the
25 course of the hearing. And you said that the
01668
1 cumulative effects assessment is incorrectly
2 interpreted and applied. I wondered if you could
3 point to something in writing in terms of the
4 Cumulative Effects Assessment Practitioners Guide
5 which would substantiate the claim that you have
6 made? We have talked about this over the last
7 number of days. We don't have an actual quote
8 from the guide.
9 MR. CLIFTON: I would have to consider
10 that a bit. Off the top of my head, I can't, but
11 I can cite a number of examples.
12 MR. WEBSTER: Would you find those for
13 us, please?
14 MR. CLIFTON: I will. Where
15 facilities are seeking expansion, and the
16 assessments submitted for the expansion and
17 rejected on the basis that an existing unlicensed
18 facility cannot be expanded, and this is both
19 Federal and Provincial regulators, not Manitoba
20 regulators, but other jurisdictions, that have
21 insisted on the entire facility being subjected to
22 the same level of scrutiny as the expansion.
23 MR. WEBSTER: Because I think that
24 kind of question relates to the assessment.
25 Before Mr. Osler's degrees of significance can be
01669
1 determined, it is a question of whether the work
2 has covered a sufficient area in sufficient depth
3 before you apply the significance criteria, if I
4 understand what is going on here correctly. So,
5 that's why I'm asking that question. I think it
6 is a very important one for us to have.
7 MR. CLIFTON: I will give you one
8 example that is currently in the public domain,
9 and it relates to Sask Power station at Estevan,
10 the boundary power station, which has been working
11 with a waste management system from the 1950s and
12 they recently applied for expansion of the system.
13 They were bounced back in the regulatory system on
14 the basis that the system could not be expanded
15 because from a regulatory perspective it did not
16 exist. So it needed to be validated and subjected
17 to expansion, and they are in fact in the process
18 of filing the ES on the whole system. I read that
19 with some interest because it indicated a bit of a
20 new direction. In the industrial facilities,
21 there has been more -- in my experience, there has
22 been more willingness of the regulators to
23 consider grandfathering facilities in place, but
24 over the last three or four years that willingness
25 appears to have dissipated.
01670
1 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Just by way
2 of a little bit of background to Dr. Webster's
3 last question about cumulative effects assessment,
4 it is an argument of particular concern to this
5 panel because last week we heard a presentation
6 and a lot of discussion from the Floodway
7 Authority demonstrating how in their mind they
8 have met the criteria of CEAA. So we would be
9 particularly interested in your view of how they
10 may not have met the criteria of CEAA.
11 MR. CLIFTON: Well, the word that I
12 have some difficulty in understanding how it is
13 incorporated in the proposed methodology for CEAA
14 is past. And the evolving baseline concept that I
15 now understand it, that is novel. Baseline as a
16 word, as a meaning, it is a base from which you
17 start.
18 THE CHAIRMAN: Perhaps when you are
19 able to come back we can discuss this a little
20 further. I would also like to ask you before we
21 conclude, I think you answered earlier that you
22 haven't had a chance to review any of the
23 transcripts from last week?
24 MR. CLIFTON: That's correct. I have
25 them, but I haven't --
01671
1 THE CHAIRMAN: Last Thursday in
2 particular there was a fair bit of discussion on
3 groundwater issues. I am wondering if prior to
4 returning you might have a look at that and just
5 advise us whether any of -- whether you find any
6 comfort in any of the information that came out in
7 that discussion?
8 MR. CLIFTON: I will do so.
9 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much,
10 and thank you for your participation here this
11 afternoon. We will break shortly. This evening
12 we have seven presenters, members of the general
13 public, who will be making presentations, so that
14 will certainly fill our two hours. I would ask
15 everybody to be back here for a 7:00 o'clock
16 start. Right now our schedule for tomorrow, we
17 have, I believe, four groups that we are hoping to
18 get some or all of them on; that's Cooks Creek
19 Conservation District to conclude the
20 cross-examination of them; Jack Jonasson with his
21 presentation on behalf of the Coalition for Flood
22 Protection North; the three municipalities and
23 their presentation; and the Peguis First Nations.
24 Hopefully we will get most of them on tomorrow, if
25 not all of them. We will break now for about an
01672
1 hour and a half and be back here just before
2 seven.
3 (Proceedings recessed at 5:30 p.m. and
4 reconvened at 7:00 p.m.)
5
6 THE CHAIRMAN: Good evening. Can we
7 come to order, please. I see a few new faces in
8 the audience so I will repeat my favourite
9 admonition. I don't want to hear any cell phones
10 and I don't want to hear any side conversations.
11 If you need to take a cell phone call or engage in
12 any conversations, please step out into the hall.
13 Tonight's proceedings will be just
14 presentations from members of the public who have
15 indicated to us that they wish to make a
16 presentation. There are seven people. We have
17 two hours. I will hold each of the presenters
18 strictly to 15 minutes. So when the 15 minutes is
19 up, I'm going to stop you otherwise we won't be
20 out of here by nine o'clock. And many of us have
21 to be back here tomorrow morning at nine o'clock
22 so we don't want to stay any later tonight than we
23 need to.
24 The order that I'm going to call the
25 people up tonight is as people requested. First
01673
1 will be Mr. Bob Galloway, then Karl Pohl, Myron
2 Gavaga, David Grant, Hugh Arklie, Bob Bodnaruk and
3 Randy Znamirowski.
4 So Mr. Galloway, would you please come
5 up. Just before you start, Mr. Galloway, I would
6 note that all of the presenters will be sworn in.
7 There will be no cross-examination of the
8 presenters by any of the parties. The panelists
9 may have a question or two of clarification.
10 Mr. Galloway, I'll have the Commission
11 Secretary swear you in before you make your
12 presentation, please.
13
14 (ROBERT GALLOWAY: SWORN)
15
16 THE CHAIRMAN: You may proceed,
17 Mr. Galloway.
18 MR. GALLOWAY: Mr. Sergeant and
19 members of your panel, my name is Bob Galloway and
20 I represent Anola community enhancement as well as
21 the many users of highway number 15.
22 In March of 2004, a petition of 1,480
23 signatures consisting of citizens using highway 15
24 was presented to the Floodway Authority, Manitoba
25 Highways Department, Dillon Consulting, RM of
01674
1 Springfield, Infrastructure Canada, Springfield
2 MLA and MP regarding the construction of a four
3 lane bridge over the highway on highway 15. The
4 amount of signatures were collected in less than
5 two weeks and we feel that only a small number of
6 people who utilize the highway were informed about
7 the petition.
8 At one point, the volume of cars
9 crossing the floodway bridge exceeded 10,000 cars
10 per day and goes up in the summer months. Traffic
11 volumes and safety alone definitely confirms the
12 need for the bridge. In January 2005, via the
13 media quoting Ernie Gilroy, CEO of the Floodway
14 Authority, we were assured that the construction
15 of a four lane bridge over the floodway would go
16 ahead. And today, we are here to get confirmation
17 from you, the Clean Environment Commission. Thank
18 you.
19 THE CHAIRMAN: Well, we can't give you
20 that confirmation but it's my understanding that
21 that is indeed the case.
22 MR. THOMSON: It's in the plan.
23 THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Thomson is the
24 person at the Floodway Authority in charge of the
25 bridge construction and he just says that it is in
01675
1 the plan.
2 MR. GALLOWAY: I appreciate that and I
3 thank you.
4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you,
5 Mr. Galloway. Mr. Pohl. While we're doing that,
6 Mr. Pohl, we'll have the Commission Secretary
7 swear you in.
8
9 (KARL POHL: SWORN)
10
11 MR. POHL: Even at the best of times,
12 my pronunciation is not really clear. I speak to
13 you with one tooth so it is a bit difficult.
14 I got this picture April 10, 2004.
15 THE CHAIRMAN: You'll have to speak
16 into the microphone, Mr. Pohl.
17 MR. POHL: Yeah. That's the roll-out
18 structure of the Red River Floodway that empties
19 into the Red River. As you can see, the flood
20 water is rather lumpy. I won't elaborate on what
21 it is and what I suspect it is. I'll let
22 everybody figure that out themselves. It deeply
23 concerned me because it runs over exposed aquifer.
24 And that is our life line, that's our water. So I
25 put a short caption there.
01676
1 And here we see the water just after
2 it broke past the bridge in Selkirk and you
3 appreciate the elevated level of the Red River at
4 that point. I just caught it in time. It was
5 already starting to recede. It was 1996. And
6 incidentally, the walls of the fort are 10 feet
7 high. So there isn't that much water, that much
8 open space there to get a large flood through
9 there. When the Red River will not open up, there
10 is a real serious problem that I see.
11 After all, past this point, we still
12 have one more city that needs protecting and
13 that's just the way it looks. And if you look at
14 the size of the river bed and the steepness of the
15 banks there, when the old timers moved out there
16 to that fort, when they had to abandon the City of
17 Winnipeg which was just a hamlet in 1826, one can
18 appreciate why they moved to this location. It's
19 my personal belief that this probably hasn't
20 flooded since the last Ice Age.
21 It towers over the countryside this
22 whole area. I believe it's between 762 and
23 764 feet above sea level. So if you compare that
24 to downtown Winnipeg, it should be lower but it is
25 way higher. It would have made a good capital
01677
1 site or legislature site. I guess the old
2 governor knew about that.
3 This was quite a challenge taking
4 these pictures by the way because you don't want
5 to slide into a flooded river. You only do that
6 once. So please take a note of that, this is the
7 year 2004, minor event. This is not a great flood
8 but it shows the Commission, to everybody in this
9 room here that ice in the river that doesn't want
10 to let go is not only a serious concern, it also
11 poses a serious danger if there is a major event
12 that's peaking rather fast due to a fast run-off.
13 There's no two floods that are alike but it's a
14 real possibility that, by my estimation, between
15 12 to 14 hours that this water will be in downtown
16 Winnipeg through the back door.
17 There is a lot of information in these
18 pictures because I used high resolution so
19 everybody can see this to the best possible
20 advantage and detail. And if you see, take a look
21 through the -- we'll, see if we can get this thing
22 going here. Here we go. You see here, these are
23 not lumps. Do you see the size of these things?
24 That is definitely ice, not like this other stuff
25 because that was a street several miles long, the
01678
1 first picture I showed. Suffice it to say that it
2 didn't smell very good when I went down there at
3 the roll-up structure.
4 There is quite a bit erosion and
5 evidence as it is and it was discussed by the end
6 that they would rip up -- oh, here we go. That's
7 my award winning picture that was shown on the
8 West Coast. You'll see how little margin we have
9 left here. You already went past it. Already
10 above the super structure of the bridge. And if
11 you get it hung up, at that point, and it
12 coincides with there's an additional raising of
13 the floodgates in Winnipeg and pushing more water
14 through the floodway, you could easily have a
15 situation where the Selkirk draw bridge would make
16 a fine decoration at the old folks home. I'm
17 quite sure there will be a few heart attacks.
18 We all know what that is. That's the
19 St. Peter's Dynevor bridge. That was the first
20 Native and Metis settlement on the Red River, the
21 first attempt at agriculture. One of the greatest
22 Native friends of the white man, Chief Peguis, is
23 buried there. And we have a picture that shows
24 the ice within six feet of some of those graves.
25 So we have another problem there.
01679
1 But the unpredictability of ice jams.
2 I have spoken to scientists at the Red River
3 conference about this and -- there they are. I
4 was told that there is no reliable way to model
5 ice jams. You cannot model these because you are
6 always wrong.
7 That's me here. And I wear a long
8 parka so you've got a pretty good scale here. And
9 these deposits. And it coincides with a forecast
10 of water resources that the possibility of ice
11 jams is very low and that the ice is weak. It was
12 blue ice and it didn't look weak to me.
13 Here we got -- that is Breezy Point.
14 At this point when that water starts heading west,
15 we are at 721 feet above sea level. And you see,
16 there is no ice jams in evidence anywhere near
17 that portion of the lower Red because there is a
18 very low bank here. Here you can see it really
19 well. You see, what happens is when the water
20 starts pushing from the south, it lifts the entire
21 ice pack. It doesn't go forward, it just lifts
22 it. And the water takes the least -- the path of
23 least assistance and goes AWOL right towards
24 Clandeboye.
25 And I've got a caption here that
01680
1 anybody can read. So I'd better shut up and let
2 you all read it. I'll just point it out. It was
3 a minor flood event at about 65,000 cfs. If you
4 compare this to one of the great floods, it
5 doesn't even qualify as small potatoes. And this
6 is one of what I personally consider the most
7 serious threats in the entire system, in the
8 entire terrain is that Selkirk draw bridge.
9 Here I'm saying it on the screen. And
10 if you compare this to the flood of record which
11 was by no means the greatest that came through
12 here in the last 300 years, it was at 226,000 cfs.
13 And I guess some of the engineers reduced it
14 temporarily to 225,000. They were trying to tell
15 me that Sir Sanford Flemming was wrong. If he
16 wasn't accurate, the railroad that he built into
17 Western Canada would have never worked. He was a
18 very smart man.
19 And here we got another parameters
20 that we haven't properly addressed. Strong
21 northerly winds severely impact the flow capacity
22 of the lower Red River. A 35-mile per hour
23 northerly wind will cause a rise of the river
24 level by more than 3 feet within hours and
25 decrease the outflow capacity because of the wind
01681
1 set and the back water effect that's in there.
2 And it can be readily observed as far as the
3 northern outskirts of Selkirk and I believe the
4 owner of Selkirk Air is here. He knows what I'm
5 talking about because his dock there bobs up and
6 down.
7 And here is another one. There's more
8 water in the floodway, dislodged ice jams north of
9 Selkirk. I had a series of animated discussions
10 with the chief engineer of the MFA who is of the
11 opinion that ice -- that more water will drag that
12 ice into the lake. It won't because once the
13 forward momentum is lost and the river has
14 stalled, one can compare it to a stalled freight
15 train. You need an awful lot of power to get it
16 going again, and that's the basic problem. Once
17 you have overbank flooding and you have a severe
18 ice jam, you know, the only thing that helps is
19 friendly fire to get it going, when it gets bad
20 enough.
21 And now with the flood control
22 structure on the other end of it. You know, I
23 took the time to look at both ends. It looks
24 pretty good and solid here, doesn't it? There is
25 additional riprap has been placed here, something
01682
1 that was not there in 1997. And I pray to God
2 that this riprap is not expected to hold up a
3 crumbling structure. And we shall see that on the
4 next picture.
5 By the way, there are some grouting
6 has been done here because there was a jamming
7 problem with the gates, with one of the gates,
8 this one here, during the 1997 flood. And
9 officially, it was called routine maintenance and
10 it's pretty well not in evidence anymore at this
11 point.
12 To my understanding, it was designed
13 by a Dutch fellow and nobody can beat the Dutch
14 people for protecting themselves from flooding.
15 You take this from somebody that was born in
16 Germany. You know, the Dutch may not be big but
17 they have been surviving for centuries below the
18 level of the north sea which is quite an
19 accomplishment.
20 It is quite an ingenious design that I
21 had to familiarize myself with it because in
22 Germany, they use vertical sliding gates. And
23 I've also seen pictures where they were pounding
24 against them with a wreckage ball because the ice
25 had totally jammed these things when they tried to
01683
1 activate them. That's one of the drawbacks.
2 There are several gate systems and I'm
3 not a licensed engineer but I'm quite familiar
4 with the subject on hand here. It's not up to me
5 to speculate whether that was the right type of
6 gating to be used but you've got to give it
7 credit. It has protected Manitoba's capital city,
8 you know, several times. It has proved its worth.
9 I personally would have loved to see it go east of
10 of the Birds Hill Park instead of traversing the
11 flood plain and the Transcona plume. When you see
12 that thing on the near full load condition, just
13 by an eyeball estimate, the water is at least
14 15 feet above Transcona. God forbid ever
15 something happens there. You know, these things
16 people would in fact experience the force of a
17 Tsunami.
18 Water is stored energy when you start
19 jacking it up. The higher you jack it up, the
20 more energy you have, so the more careful you have
21 to be.
22 I'm not trying here to run down
23 anybody's project but I'm here to express a few
24 concerns as a citizen and a resident of the area.
25 And I trust that the Commission takes a good look
01684
1 at what I'm showing here tonight.
2 Please bear with us. We do like
3 everybody else does. When something doesn't work
4 fast enough or right enough, to blame the
5 computer.
6 I have no budget. I produced this
7 slide show on my own without anybody's help.
8 That's the first time that somebody ever helped me
9 because this is more than one man alone can
10 handle. And I did read the instructions how to
11 put a Power Point presentation together. It took
12 me about four weeks to get the most important --
13 oh, here we go.
14 This is something I would like to
15 point out. In my time as a young fella, as a
16 young man in the land of my origin in Germany, I
17 have seen remnants of power dams that the Royal
18 Air Force so aptly bombed. And I can assure you
19 as being a recipient of some of those loads, they
20 were deadly accurate. And the U.S. Air Force was
21 not quite as good because they didn't have to be
22 as accurate. They had more ordinance.
23 But this looks very similar to me.
24 This is more than just surface caulking for the
25 simple reason it is not confined to the joints.
01685
1 Some of the ones that I have seen, they are going
2 down as far as -- if I could put a recommendation
3 to what you people, I would like to see this thing
4 a copper dam and checked right down because so
5 much depends on it. You can expand the floodway
6 all you want -- you could have also chosen the
7 design that I had, it wouldn't make no difference
8 because neither one of these two would operate
9 until Winnipeg is totally flooded. Here is the
10 (inaudible) and here you see the ridge. That's
11 Lower Fort Garry. That was the barrier that we
12 have to deal with. Nothing goes over it. And
13 here we got about 440 feet. If we can get 226,000
14 cfs through this thing, then I'm very surprised.
15 So I guess we're coming to near the end of the
16 presentation.
17 It's difficult to do all this in 15
18 minutes. I hate rushed jobs but there are other
19 people standing in line here. But basically
20 that's what we have. And this is the last slide
21 now. We made it by some miracle. All the other
22 ones is my written presentation which the
23 Commission has and it should be available to the
24 public if they ask the Commission.
25 So I conclude my presentation. I
01686
1 thank you for your time and I hope, as a private
2 citizen, I have made a difference and raised a few
3 concerns that may get people thinking. I
4 personally do not believe that we can get a
5 repetition of the 1826 flood to that point. It
6 didn't happen then, it's not going to happen
7 today.
8 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much,
9 Mr. Pohl, and I congratulate you on your
10 presentation. It was very good. And I allowed a
11 few minutes extra because of the initial problems
12 with your computer.
13 MS. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, if we can
14 enter Mr. Pohl's presentation as Exhibit 61.
15
16
17 (EXHIBIT 61: Presentation by Karl
18 Pohl to CEC)
19
20 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Next,
21 Mr. Myron Gavaga. Mr. Gavaga, I will ask the
22 Commission secretary to swear you in.
23
24 (MYRON GAVAGA: SWORN)
25
01687
1 MR. GAVAGA: I am Myron Gavaga from
2 north Springfield. I've been a lifelong resident
3 there. The credentials are I was a 1971 diploma,
4 agricultural graduate. I actually worked on the
5 floodway in 1966. I had worked for Prudent (ph)
6 Drilling in 1970 and 1971 in drilling wells in
7 north Springfield, East Kildonan and quite a large
8 irrigation pump test out in southern Manitoba in
9 Pipestone. It was for agricultural drainage.
10 I bought our family farm in 1972.
11 Currently, we have a -- it's a dairy farm and a
12 hay farm. And we are located on Lauren Hill Road
13 and approximately half a mile from the north
14 Springfield school, about half a mile east of the
15 Red River Floodway. My wife Judy and son Jordan
16 and daughter-in-law Kelly are all members of the
17 farm.
18 I was on the Cooks Creek Conservation
19 District when it started until the completion of
20 the Cooks Creek Diversion. We had land
21 expropriated for the floodway. It was quite
22 controversial at the time. I was always of the
23 opinion that it was an excellent thing for
24 Winnipeg. It was just so very poorly to the
25 people that had to give land up. So the more we
01688
1 can have to make people feel good about giving up
2 things, it's better.
3 Since right from 1968, we have leased
4 back 500 acres from the floodway. And that's
5 south of Springhill to the CP main line. And
6 actually, I was the first one to rework that
7 section of the floodway and we reworked it three
8 times, the hay field. It's 37 years old and about
9 every 10 years you need to redo it. I have also
10 irrigated four times that section from the low
11 flow channel in the floodway through a permit from
12 the Province of Manitoba. So I have a reasonably
13 good knowledge of irrigation and wells and water
14 uses and the observation from my lifetime so far.
15 Originally, I was really really upset
16 with, you know, the expansion of the floodway and
17 I am going to apologize to this gentleman over
18 here for -- you know, it's been an extremely hard
19 job for you to do because you were left such a
20 poor -- you know, so many breaks in the bottom of
21 the floodway. And before we can expand it, that
22 has to be fixed, all the breaks in the aquifer.
23 And when it was originally done, the
24 low flow channel I think was 10 feet wide and it
25 had a 6 to 1 slope and it was about 4 feet deep.
01689
1 There is places now that it's almost 70 feet wide
2 and five feet deep. It's a full width. That's
3 not with spring run-off, heavy rain run-off or
4 water coming down from the floodway and the walls
5 are straight. You know, every year it changes and
6 we are up there haying it so we get to have a
7 pretty good look.
8 I would take an exception to when they
9 say that there are springs in the bottom. Those
10 are not springs. Springs come out the side of
11 hills. These are small blow-outs in the aquifer
12 and there is 13 of them in our 2 miles that we
13 work.
14 When the floodway was first built, the
15 water never went as far as Deacon's Corner down
16 the low flow channel. And since then, it goes way
17 around to 59. Like that's when it's very dry and
18 there's no water coming into it. So obviously
19 there must be water coming from somewhere. And
20 that's way south of the Transcona sewers inlet.
21 So you know, like it's very important
22 before any more work is done on the floodway that
23 it is completely sealed.
24 We actually, through working the hay
25 fields, we have uncovered a tremendous amount of
01690
1 that broken limestone bedrock and in excess of,
2 you know, 500 to 1,000 tonnes of it. And we have
3 it. And you have some -- seen some samples of it.
4 So somewhere -- you know, and I was looking at the
5 pictures yesterday and today of where the low flow
6 channel and then there's the up to six feet of
7 clay. And then the bedrock, I would hazard to
8 guess that some of the low flow channel is at the
9 bedrock already. Because where did all this
10 bedrock come from? And the continual erosion --
11 and a lot of the erosion, you know, a lot of it
12 comes from the big flush of water every
13 seven/eight years from the floodway.
14 And another thing that could very
15 easily be happening, if bedrock is exposed when it
16 gets to 45 below and 50 below and that stuff is
17 freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing,
18 that also could help crack it and loosen it. And
19 then when water comes through during floods, then
20 it excavates it.
21 The biggest rock that we ever saw in
22 the bottom of the floodway was about 12 feet high
23 and about 14 feet wide and that was the second
24 last flood when the water receded from the
25 floodway. And the last flood, that rock was gone.
01691
1 So wherever it went, it's now not there. But it's
2 tremendous force and tremendous pressure that take
3 these things.
4 So my first concern is the low flow
5 channel in itself not only to the width but to
6 the -- not to the depth but to the width that it
7 is increasing to. For a little while there I
8 thought why don't you just leave it for another 75
9 years and it will be the full width at the bottom
10 of the floodway you can save 660 million bucks,
11 hey, but that was just sort of an observation,
12 you know, from not a technical person. But it is
13 expanding at an extremely quick rate. It's been
14 45 years but I'd like to see what it looked like
15 in another 200, you know.
16 The second point that wasn't really
17 brought up here but in the last two or three days.
18 On low recharge years, last year -- or okay, 2003
19 was a drought year and it was a low recharge
20 aquifer year. Sort of from the beginning before
21 the floodway in 1960, the static water level was
22 about 2 feet. When the floodway went through, it
23 dropped to 12 feet. So about approximately 1965,
24 it dropped to 12 feet and everybody got scared and
25 we got a new well drilled. Our well never went
01692
1 dry, it just dropped 12 feet. And the shallow
2 wells along Hazelridge Road, all the sand point
3 wells dried up because they are all hand dug
4 wells, hey. Actually interestingly, last summer a
5 50-foot well went dry north of Garven and that
6 would be like a marginal well.
7 Going back to 2003, in July of 2003
8 the static water level was 41 feet. It dropped to
9 41 feet. And that's from the graphs from a well
10 that was on just by Hugh Munro's there on 207 and
11 Cedar Lake Road. I was talking to one of the
12 fellows there when he was reading the graph.
13 And the same summer, we have two wells
14 at the farm. Both the wells, the pumps burned out
15 and one of the wells was only two years old. We
16 had only had them down 40 feet. They were
17 submersible pumps and they were only down 40 feet.
18 So obviously the water had dropped below 40 feet.
19 And that's the first time that that had ever
20 happened. And it's sort of the coming of concern
21 of low recharge, more water leaking out of the
22 aquifer, more water being pumped to a lot more
23 residences in the area. Birds Hill, I think they
24 have, I don't know, seven or nine wells now that
25 they are taking water out. Oakbank, I think it
01693
1 comes on line this year. But Dugald is getting
2 water from (inaudible) pit and that's basically
3 all the same aquifer. So you know, and at the
4 same time, we have, you know, such, you know,
5 pristine water is leaking out and we're wasting
6 it.
7 We were in Africa last spring and if
8 you want to see how water is looked at in
9 countries that don't have it, and we have it and
10 we're wasting it. That's the biggest sin of all
11 really, like to destroy like what a lot of people
12 in the world don't have.
13 Basically before anything is done with
14 the floodway, that sure has to be sealed properly.
15 And you know, that might necessitate making it an
16 awful lot wider. And I'd sure like to commend
17 Jack Jonasson and the reeves from the various
18 municipalities because they have brought it out to
19 the committee most of the serious concerns. And
20 they've done an excellent job with the people and
21 the resources that they've had and the time
22 they've had to put it together because I think
23 that we've probably just about handled all of the
24 concerns. Is there any questions or anything that
25 anybody might have?
01694
1 THE CHAIRMAN: Not at this time.
2 Thank you very much.
3 MR. GAVAGA: Thank you very much.
4 THE CHAIRMAN: David Grant. I'll have
5 the Commission secretary swear you in while we're
6 waiting for that to pull up.
7
8 (DAVID GRANT: SWORN)
9
10 MR. GRANT: As an introduction, I'm
11 just here as a citizen, not with that company or
12 the other company. And I'm not really an expert
13 in any of these topics but there are a couple of
14 issues that I did want to bring up. The slides
15 will explain them but I can start with them. One
16 is the idea we have such a thing as a 100 year or
17 700 year flood. If nothing was changing in the
18 world, that might be a useful term, a way for
19 people to relate to how bad a flood it is.
20 But since Europeans got here, they
21 have been changing the hydrology of the
22 neighbourhood. And they dig ditches as a habit
23 and they drain swamps. And one of the corollaries
24 of doing that is you make water get to the river a
25 whole lot faster than would otherwise be the case.
01695
1 So that's one of my points, is that
2 this idea of a 700 year flood. If the world kept
3 draining swamps and kept building deeper and
4 deeper ditches, we would get every snow melt event
5 to Winnipeg a whole lot faster. If we can turn
6 the Red River basin into the way it was 300 years
7 ago, we probably would be fine the way we were
8 because there were zigzaggy little creeks all over
9 the place draining and no ditches.
10 So I termed this a belated exploration
11 of alternatives because in my opinion, this would
12 have been a pretty nice thing to have discussed
13 years ago.
14 Anyway, so that's just the date and
15 the place and my name. And we get into our
16 second -- so introduction. My comment about the
17 700 year flood and what it really means. That's
18 to talk about if we are going to be able to handle
19 a flood that was typical of what happened in
20 Manitoba between 1800 and 1100, that's a typical
21 natural flood that happens about every 700 years
22 you could say. But the way they have changed the
23 Red River basin is very significant.
24 So right now, a snow melt that comes
25 right to our limits today would not have been as
01696
1 bad 200 years ago because the water would still be
2 in the fields, it would be in all -- the Rat River
3 and all the rest of them would have been full of
4 water but not getting it to the Red River into
5 Winnipeg very quickly.
6 So because the basin no longer drains
7 in a natural way, we get the water here a lot
8 faster. So when you do all that draining and
9 tiling of fields and that's been going on a lot in
10 the last 50 years. So the floodway was a good
11 idea in its time.
12 Since it was built, a whole lot of the
13 Red River basin has put tile in their fields. If
14 you drive down a dirt road anywhere in North
15 Dakota or Manitoba right after a thunder storm,
16 you can see one guy's field has been tiled because
17 the one right next to it is still full of water
18 and that one isn't. So you can tell
19 approximately -- because there's no other way in
20 Manitoba or North Dakota you can get a field to
21 drain in just a few minutes.
22 So anyway, that's my comment is we
23 should be using thousands of cfs or per cent of
24 1997 but not a hundreds of years idea.
25 So, also my idea with this, you know,
01697
1 this event is sort of let's make sure we don't
2 forget any little details with regard to aquifers
3 and stuff like that, assuming we're going to go
4 ahead and build this thing.
5 My understanding, when I worked for a
6 company that was trying to build a plant and there
7 was public concern, is that we had to go through
8 making sure the siting and everything else was
9 acceptable to everybody before we did a design.
10 And my understanding from attending some time last
11 week with the Commission is that a whole lot of
12 design effort has been done. And I did bring all
13 these alternative ideas to the floodway people
14 when they had their meetings a year ago.
15 But anyway, so this CEC thing, I don't
16 know why it is we're talking about these things
17 now and why there weren't public meetings two
18 years ago. But anyway, our local media covered
19 the idea of holding the water before it got to
20 Winnipeg. And needless to say, the people whose
21 houses would have been in the middle of that big
22 artificial lake didn't like that idea. And I've
23 been suggesting this reversing the draining
24 improvements temporarily and I had been talking
25 for a few years now of calling it the 10,000
01698
1 wetlands and weirs idea.
2 So the alternatives -- we seem to be
3 on our way to only one solution for the problem of
4 preventing flooding in Winnipeg and that is to
5 make a bigger floodway.
6 The alternatives, and I would say
7 there are at least a couple of alternatives, have
8 not been fully explored and I would like to see
9 that. And it is obvious that if we did enough
10 construction work in the tributary area, we can
11 hold up enough water in these tributaries to not
12 have to do anything with our floodway. How many
13 wetlands we would have to create, I don't know.
14 We know that it would reverse the process. But
15 since I didn't get any funding, so I don't know
16 how many wetlands we would have had to build.
17 Anyway, benefits of wetlands. This
18 stuff is from the United States Environmental
19 Protection Agency. They have a website that
20 explains wetlands. And they are funding and
21 encouraging people within their jurisdiction to
22 build wetlands to reverse the drain.
23 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's kind of
24 small. Can you read this?
25 MR. GRANT: I'm just going to go to
01699
1 the bottom line of it. Okay. The water that
2 flows in the Red will be cleaner. The advantages
3 of putting in more wetlands that if you retain
4 more water in the basin where it melts where it
5 lands, the groundwater will be replenished. Wells
6 will be more drought resistant. Farm life will
7 improve. Hunting and fishing opportunities,
8 obviously if you have thousands of new wetlands,
9 will be great. If you do the wetlands thing
10 instead of the floodway, the water that gets to
11 the Red River will be cleaner because on average,
12 it will have been through an acre or so of reeds
13 and swamp and that really purifies the water. It
14 takes the nutrients out and the solids. And so
15 you'll have a cleaner Red River and a much cleaner
16 Lake Winnipeg.
17 So Manitoba government has been
18 talking lately about how much they want to improve
19 the quality of Lake Winnipeg water. This is
20 probably the best way of doing it. If you had
21 most of the water arriving here, arriving in
22 Winnipeg having gone through a wetland somewhere,
23 it would be much cleaner water.
24 North Dakota is actively working on
25 another idea. They call it waffling. And because
01700
1 in a thoroughly -- a very flat farmland area, they
2 may or may not be able to build much in the way of
3 wetland but they can certainly hold the water
4 back. So if they put a temporary weir on a ditch
5 or on a small river, they can hold water there and
6 their intention is just to flood a few sections of
7 land, the lowest land, and hold it there until the
8 flood crest is gone. So instead of having a
9 really bad situation in Grand Forks for a week,
10 they would have a tolerable level for a month or a
11 month and a half.
12 So there are several advantages to
13 those people. But with a simple study, we can
14 determine how much wetland we'd have to build to
15 protect our cities. No one has done that yet as
16 far as I have been able to determine.
17 So the waffle concept, this is the
18 University of North Dakota's idea and it's being
19 tested in Minnesota and North Dakota. And I've
20 got a picture from the University of North Dakota
21 website. They are quite proud of this research.
22 This is one of the researcher's pictures from the
23 Grand Forks Herald, the whole thing from their UND
24 Research Center. And this is just one of their
25 holding areas. So basically they have determined
01701
1 that this land would be appropriate for holding
2 water. They dam it up and that's just an outlet
3 for it.
4 Wet lands. The U.S. EPA supports
5 wetland creation, restoration and there is some
6 significant benefits. I've already described most
7 of them. But this is text from the U.S.
8 environmental protection people. And it just
9 describes how much they've done and how much
10 people use the rivers and wetlands that are
11 created, the rivers that are fixed and the
12 wetlands that are created.
13 Wetlands provide food, et cetera. You
14 know, again, this is approximately the benefits
15 that I described in my text. And so --
16 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You're going
17 too fast. We're trying to read that.
18 THE CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry, he's on a
19 fairly limited time. He's only got a couple of
20 minutes left.
21 MR. GRANT: So anyway, that's a
22 description of that. This text has been e-mailed
23 to the secretary and would be available for
24 anybody. And as I said, this text is usepa.gov I
25 think.
01702
1 And so we'll move along. And so this
2 is the most important part of this one. The
3 wetlands interstep storm run-off. So if you have
4 a storm or snow melt in the spring, and the creek
5 goes into a five acre wetland, that wetland will
6 hold the water. And it will leak out gradually
7 over many weeks. So it is a good thing for flood
8 prevention. It's been recognized around the
9 world, certainly across North America. And the
10 middle fine print is that when you take a wetland,
11 you put a ditch through the middle of it, it
12 drains quickly and you get to farm some of that
13 land you have just taken. But now whenever
14 flooding happens, it just zooms right on through
15 and nails the city downstream.
16 So in my opinion, just as a lay
17 citizen, we need to reverse the history we have in
18 North America of draining that swamp. We had that
19 history. You know the old saying of how do you
20 deal with the alligators? You drain the swamp and
21 they all die off. And it certainly worked in
22 Florida but now they recognize it's not the best
23 thing.
24 So the progress that has been made is
25 that North Dakota is still in the research stage.
01703
1 They are trying it out. They want to be able to
2 prove to the world that when you do this stuff, it
3 makes the wells work better. This is stuff that's
4 intuitive, fairly obvious. They want to be able
5 to prove it.
6 U.S. EPA is still encouraging anybody
7 in the U.S. really but anybody in North Dakota or
8 Minnesota that wants to take their little stream
9 and turn it into wetland, the U.S. EPA will buy
10 the land. And a lot of people in North Dakota are
11 looking at that as a good idea too because some of
12 the land that gets flooded regularly isn't that
13 productive. You know, if every couple of years
14 you're going to lose a crop because it didn't dry
15 out for a while, you might as well just sell it to
16 the government for a good price and it can become
17 a permanent wetland.
18 And all these efforts, the stuff done
19 in North Dakota and the U.S. EPA stuff is reducing
20 the size of our next flood.
21 So the bottom line, if enough water
22 retention schemes and wetland restoration is done,
23 the current floodway is big enough. Basically
24 it's a matter of how many of those do we have to
25 build and if I'd had -- if somebody had taken me
01704
1 seriously at the Floodway Commission a year ago,
2 then they might have done the calculation on we
3 need to create 800 acres of wetland to solve our
4 problem. But nobody ever did that. And it wasn't
5 really fair because my understanding is the
6 floodway group is only commissioned to build the
7 floodway. They were not commissioned to solve the
8 flooding problem. And if somebody who had that
9 responsibility five years ago had taken this
10 seriously, then a coordinated effort could have
11 been made between the American authorities and
12 Manitoba that we could have dealt with this
13 properly because if enough stuff gets built in the
14 States, Grand Forks is safe, and there's no other
15 way of making it safe, and we would be safe
16 because of our existing floodway. So that's the
17 presentation.
18 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Grant.
19 Mr. Arklie, I will have the Commission
20 secretary swear you in.
21
22 (HUGH ARKLIE: SWORN)
23
24 MR. ARKLIE: Before I begin my
25 presentation, I would like the Commission and
01705
1 other folks to know that what Mr. Grant just
2 described is actually working on a small scale in
3 the municipalities surrounding the Village of
4 Miami. It is known as the Deerwood Soil and Water
5 Management Corporation, and it runs something
6 called the Tobacco Creek Watershed, and its goal
7 is to hold back water and prevent flooding. And
8 it is a perfect example of what Mr. Grant has just
9 described and it is very successful.
10 My presentation will follow-up on four
11 questions that I posed on February 21, and will
12 introduce one new point. The elaboration on those
13 four questions is as follows.
14 Number 1, there is no geographical,
15 geological, archeological or historical evidence
16 of a 700 year flood in the Red River Valley.
17 There is evidence of a 300 year flood.
18 Winnipeggers and Manitobans have been the subject
19 of a misleading marketing campaign that raises the
20 specter of a 700 year flood. At the very least,
21 it should be made clear to citizens and taxpayers
22 that the floodway is being expanded to allow for
23 the first known 700 year flood. And I appreciate
24 what Mr. Grant just said, it is all really quite
25 irrelevant in terms of numbers like that.
01706
1 Number 2, there is far too much
2 uncertainty around the elusive $11 million
3 mitigation fund. Nobody knows if the amount is
4 accurate or adequate, nobody knows how it will be
5 accessed, invested, reported, replenished,
6 published or audited. For now the public seems to
7 be relying on nothing more than the good
8 intentions of the Manitoba Floodway Authority. We
9 do so at our peril.
10 Number 3, the Manitoba Floodway
11 Authority is a Crown corporation. Members have
12 been and will continue to be appointed to the
13 body. The history of such appointments in
14 Manitoba is that they go to friends of the
15 government of the day. That dubious practice
16 should not preclude the automatic reservation of
17 seats on the Manitoba Floodway Authority for
18 citizen representatives of all affected
19 municipalities. This will help to curtail the
20 acrimony and paternalism that is already apparent.
21 Number 4, Manitoba Water Stewardship
22 is in fact a new government department. The
23 Province of Manitoba website describes it as
24 Canada's,
25 "First stand alone department with
01707
1 sole responsibility for protecting and
2 managing water."
3 The website goes on to state,
4 "The new portfolio was created to
5 bring together all of the key parts of
6 government related to water, from
7 healthy drinking water and ecosystem
8 systems to economic impacts of
9 irrigation and flood control. The
10 primary legislation governing the
11 activities of Manitoba Water
12 Stewardship is the soon to be passed
13 Water Protection Act."
14 This is how Steve Ashton, the minister of the
15 department, described the significance of the Act
16 in his personal message on the province's website.
17 "The Water Protection Act deals with
18 water protection at the source, to
19 recognize the importance of preserving
20 the ecological integrity of our rivers
21 and lakes. The Water Protection Act
22 acknowledges the social and economic
23 need to ensure a sufficient supply of
24 high quality water in the future.
25 This legislation officially recognizes
01708
1 the critical role that water plays in
2 the environmental, economic and social
3 well-being of Manitobans now and in
4 the future.
5 A particularly important part of this
6 Legislation...",
7 still quoting the minister,
8 "...calls for the establishment of
9 water quality management zones. It
10 also creates watershed planning
11 authorities to develop management
12 plans by watershed. This will help
13 municipal councils in any planning and
14 development decisions by having clear
15 guidelines and current science on how
16 watersheds are functioning and
17 affected in their jurisdictions."
18 And that speaks to what Mr. Grant just described.
19 "The Water Protection Act, as crucial
20 as it is to our province's water
21 resources, will receive third reading
22 in the legislature later this spring.
23 The Clean Environment Commission, if
24 it is prudent, will take this imminent
25 legislation, including its spirit,
01709
1 into consideration before issuing a
2 licence to the Manitoba Floodway
3 Authority."
4 And my one and only new point, is
5 this: Most scientists now agree that our climate
6 is changing. While some disagree on the causes,
7 many have concluded that the climate, particularly
8 closer to the polar zones, is warming. Based on
9 the prospects of a warming climate, Mr. Alf
10 Warkentin presented his prediction of the effect
11 of such change on precipitation and floods in the
12 Red River Valley in a research paper dated
13 June 2002.
14 Mr. Warkentin is a senior hydrologic
15 forecaster with the Province of Manitoba. His
16 conclusions were that warmer winters will reduce
17 the volume of spring runoff, thus reducing the
18 impact of spring floods from historical norms.
19 The snow accumulation period will be reduced, and
20 the sublimation losses of snow will be increased,
21 thus contributing to less spring runoff. Even
22 though Mr. Warkentin modeled spring rain to
23 increase by 15 to 25 percent, the warming of
24 northern climates could reduce average spring
25 runoff and stream flow by 20 to 40 percent.
01710
1 The CEC should require the Manitoba
2 Floodway Authority to undertake significant
3 research into the effects of global warming and
4 how that would affect the operation of the
5 floodway.
6 Alf Warkentin's research would be a
7 good starting point, because it does describe a
8 scenario under which spring runoff would be
9 extreme. This I will leave for the CEC to
10 discover on its own.
11 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Arklie.
12 Mr. Bodnaruk.
13
14 (MR. BODNARUK: SWORN)
15
16 MR. BODNARUK: Mr. Chairman, I have a
17 fairly lengthy presentation, I am hoping I can get
18 through in 15 minutes. I will probably paraphrase
19 a few places to get it done in time.
20 I am going to start off by just saying
21 that I sat through yesterday's hearings. I have
22 been to most of the hearings to date, and by the
23 end of the day I was disturbed and to a large
24 degree disgusted with the events.
25 It was and is my impression that these
01711
1 hearings were in fact an opportunity for public
2 consultation. It was an opportunity for
3 proponents and concerned residents or municipal
4 representatives to exchange ideas and learn from
5 it, learn what the concerns of the public were,
6 listen to the ideas presented, adapt to the
7 information, and be able to ensure everyone,
8 including the CEC, that a better project would
9 arise. Instead what it turned out to be was an
10 attempt to discredit individuals' opinions and
11 reports, quibble about percentages of
12 contributions to contamination instead of worrying
13 about the contamination itself, and worry about
14 pictorial representations of the full floodway
15 that was to the top of the dyke instead of to the
16 top of the berms.
17 Instead of being defensive about
18 reports, we need to sit back and listen to what is
19 being said instead of attacking what is being
20 said, and make the project a better one.
21 You can understand how frustrating it
22 is for us as well. How can we or any of the
23 experts evaluate a project when the filing by the
24 EIS by a certain date has no meaning, since
25 engineering and the baseline keeps changing
01712
1 day-by-day.
2 The Rural Municipality of Springfield
3 recognizes the right and responsibility of the
4 Provincial Government to protect the residents of
5 the City of Winnipeg from the possibilities of
6 flood damage. We also recognize that the building
7 of the original floodway has impacted the lives of
8 the residents of the RM of Springfield and the
9 expansion of the floodway will perpetuate and
10 accentuate the impacts.
11 A major part of the floodway resides
12 within the boundaries of the Springfield. We
13 therefore hope and request that the Floodway
14 Authority and the CEC pay attention to our
15 concerns.
16 While we are working towards consensus
17 on the issues of drainage and transportation
18 relative to the protect, these are probably the
19 only issues that I can provide some assurance to
20 the residents that an expansion may result in a
21 positive position for them.
22 On the issues of groundwater, I would
23 caution the residents to be concerned. You cannot
24 realistically mitigate the loss of such a valuable
25 resource. I don't think there is anyone in
01713
1 authority that can adequately assure us that there
2 will be no negative effects on our groundwater.
3 If the numbers provided by Mr. Hayes were correct
4 yesterday, and we are not -- at this point he
5 mentioned about the deepening and we agreed there
6 will be no deepening, but just the fact of
7 deepening by 5.5 metres would result in increased
8 loss of over 1 million litres per day. But even
9 if we disregard that and take into consideration
10 the 3,000 gallons per minute after construction,
11 it may put everything in perspective, that equates
12 to 19,612,800 litres per day are flowing down the
13 floodway.
14 As a resident who currently resides
15 closer than anyone along the full length of the
16 floodway, I most definitely have serious
17 reservations to the detrimental effect that the
18 floodway and the expansion may have on the
19 residents in close proximity to the project.
20 While we look at the issues of water quality and
21 quantity, we find that they are similar to
22 drainage concerns. The issues are regional, not
23 just related to the RM of Springfield but affect
24 neighboring municipalities as well.
25 The original floodway never had to
01714
1 engage in an environmental assessment and many of
2 the concerns of the residents were never
3 considered. For those reasons, I believe that you
4 have to look not only at the expansion of the
5 floodway, but also the original floodway project.
6 Some of our other concerns are as
7 follows: Reduction in the aquifer of the best
8 quality water; potential contamination of our
9 groundwater during high flows in the floodway;
10 drainage issues that are not being addressed;
11 expanded recreation on the floodway right-of-way;
12 loss of agricultural land; obviously continued
13 loss of tax revenue, which affects my taxes;
14 management of security on the floodway and
15 maintenance of the floodway, as well as
16 transportation related issues.
17 When the floodway was originally built
18 the residents of the area were certainly not all
19 treated equally or fairly. When the land was
20 expropriated, not everyone was given the same
21 value of land. One of our relatives, as a matter
22 of fact, did not want to sell their property, the
23 land was expropriated at about half the rate of
24 the other residents in the area, all but five
25 acres of the land was taken. When they complained
01715
1 about the price, the Provincial Government said it
2 was too bad and if they complained too much that
3 their house would be expropriated as well. So not
4 being treated fairly goes back a long way, and the
5 residents of the area have had to put up with a
6 lot over the 40 odd years that the floodway has
7 been in existence. Some of these concerns that I
8 mentioned need to be expanded on.
9 Ground water depletion and
10 contamination, both of the groundwater issues have
11 been represented extensively by our consultants.
12 THE CHAIRMAN: Could you just slow
13 down a bit, she can't keep up.
14 MR. BODNARUK: One of our residents
15 asked some very pertinent questions and some of
16 her questions did elicit responses from the MFA
17 that should raise some concerns.
18 MR. ABRA: You are still going too
19 fast.
20 MR. BODNARUK: Just to change from
21 water flowing into the floodway shortly after the
22 construction from 3,000 gallons per minute to 17
23 or 1800 gallons a minute currently provides a
24 strong correlation that the floodway has impacted
25 the water levels in the area. The loss of the
01716
1 aquifer and the contamination of the aquifer
2 cannot be overstated. For anyone living close to
3 the floodway, it is our prime concern.
4 Our wells in the area were affected by
5 the construction of the original floodway, and in
6 all likelihood, will be affected by the expansion.
7 These are very real possibilities, and instead of
8 the MFA getting defensive about their analysis,
9 let's get down to work and solve the problems. If
10 we are going to do a job, let's do it right.
11 While cost may be a factor, I am sure that the
12 federal and provincial governments would want to
13 err on the side of caution when the health of the
14 residents may be at risk.
15 Similarly the CEC, the MFA and rural
16 municipalities should do the same.
17 Drainage concerns, the Cooks Creek
18 Conservation District dealt with the majority of
19 the concerns for our agriculture producers. One
20 of the areas that needs to be expanded on is the
21 area near Prairie Grove and some of the drainage
22 on the inside of the floodway. The residents of
23 the Prairie Grove are concerned with the Seine
24 River diversion structure. The structure was
25 built after the 1997 flood, I believe it was in
01717
1 2001 and 2002. What they are more concerned about
2 is not after the floodway is expanded, that's less
3 of a concern than what will happen before the
4 expansion takes place.
5 With the new construction, they feel
6 that if we approach levels reaching the '97 flood
7 level, flood waters will flow back over the lip of
8 the structure and proceed into the Prairie Grove
9 area. If their observation of the elevations are
10 correct, then there should have been and still be
11 modifications to design to mitigate this potential
12 problem.
13 The other concern that we have on the
14 inside of the floodway is the lack of drainage
15 structures at all. Most of our drains flow away
16 from the floodway, but there are some where a
17 portion of our water does flow to the outside toe
18 drain. Unfortunately the outside drains are not
19 maintained on a regular basis and are in a
20 deplorable state. This is compounded by the fact
21 that four by four owners feel that is good place
22 to try to get stuck. We have water standing on
23 our property for a minimum of two to three weeks
24 every spring, and in wet summers usually a lot
25 longer. Last year our front lawn was under water
01718
1 for approximately a month and a half.
2 Expanded recreation on the floodway,
3 every resident living close to the floodway that
4 our municipality have contacted have expressed
5 concern with the idea of expanded recreation on
6 the floodway. Mr. McNeil stated this was an
7 attempt to formalize unauthorized use of the
8 floodway. And this brings us to the crux of the
9 matter. Conservation and now the MFA have allowed
10 the unauthorized use to continue for the past 40
11 years without any concern for the nearby
12 residents. Our concerns rest on a number of
13 issues, primarily the lack of maintenance and the
14 lack of management.
15 Lack of maintenance, the major part of
16 the floodway has hay leases on it. There should
17 be no trespassing on that property, yet if you go
18 up on the floodway you will find that the top of
19 the dyke and all of the berms are rutted out. And
20 this is caused, again, by the four by fours trying
21 to see how much mud they can go through. This
22 creates a danger for those operating the haybines
23 and the tractors.
24 There is an area on the floodway
25 right-of-way which was used extensively as a
01719
1 paintball war zone. And this was brought to Mr.
2 McNeil's attention earlier this past summer and I
3 wonder if he has even gone to see. There are
4 sheets of plywood and metal strewn throughout that
5 area.
6 Lack of management, almost every year
7 we have fires started on the floodway by those
8 that are using the floodway for recreation. It is
9 our fire department that has to respond. Half the
10 floodway resides in our municipality, and why
11 should we have to bear the costs and risks
12 associated with these fires? There is no barrier
13 between our properties and the floodway, there is
14 nothing to stop that fire. Two years ago there
15 was a fire started on the floodway that skipped
16 the outside drain of the floodway in the vicinity
17 of Duff Roblin Park, ended up coming on to my
18 property and destroyed a number of my trees.
19 I watched another fire get started by
20 someone trying to drive over the top of a hay
21 bale, one of the round ones, four feet high, with
22 a small four by four that got stuck on top of the
23 bale. We had another fire that skipped the
24 floodway and ended up going through our
25 neighbour's yard, and only the quick response in
01720
1 plowing up a strip of land saved a building full
2 of propane tanks.
3 The land was agricultural before the
4 floodway was built, and those of us that live
5 there live there because of the peace and quiet.
6 Prior to the floodway being built, the residents
7 didn't have to worry about the peace and quiet
8 being violated. It was all private land. There
9 were no fences required. And when the floodway
10 came around it allowed unfettered access to our
11 backyards. The peace and quiet was gone. We
12 don't want the increase in the number of people on
13 the floodway to further destroy that peaceful
14 existence. In spite of how many responsible users
15 that may go on the floodway, and the intended
16 uses, there will always be people who are
17 irresponsible in how they use the floodway, and
18 will either not stay on the trails or use the
19 trails the way they were intended. We have
20 constant trespassing upon our property from those
21 currently using the floodway for recreation.
22 I will list some of the things that we
23 have experienced throughout the years, and we
24 believe we will experience more because of the
25 unfettered access to the floodway and expanded
01721
1 recreation across the full length. We have had
2 loss of privacy, we have had fires, loss of
3 agricultural land, noise from cross-country bikes,
4 dirt bikes, snowmobiles to quad runners, damage to
5 our property, we have had quad runners run right
6 over our trees in our front yard. Access to our
7 backyards leading to break-ins and vandalism. We
8 have had stolen vehicles abandoned on the
9 floodway, we have had stolen vehicles and
10 snowmobiles that are burnt. There is regular
11 depositing of garbage, household garbage,
12 construction materials, beds, fridges, beer
13 bottles and cans. We have got the paintball war
14 zone, we have got target practicing with guns.
15 Just last week we had somebody come off the trails
16 on snowmobiles chasing deer in our land. We have
17 four by four's trespassing on our property from
18 the floodway digging ruts. We have got broken
19 beer bottles and cans and hay bales. We have had,
20 to my knowledge, I think there have been five
21 murders or bodies left on the floodway over the
22 years, and there has been at least two accidental
23 deaths relating to snowmobiles crashing into the
24 bridge on the floodway.
25 We were told by the MFA right from the
01722
1 being that the expansion project, that recreation
2 was not part of their mandate. Now we find out in
3 the hearings that the MFA has allowed for the
4 movement of dirt in the budget. How much money
5 has been set aside? Will they fence in a trail,
6 and in fact all of their property?
7 I was going to -- just a quick
8 aside -- I was going to bring in some props for
9 the hearing that CEC members could take back as
10 souvenirs. But I went up in the floodway, and no
11 more than five minutes up there I found a used
12 prophylactic and it is just typical of what is
13 being done up there, and I ask any of you, would
14 you want your children or grandchildren to go up
15 in the floodway and see that? It is a regular
16 occurrence up there.
17 Another issue is transportation
18 losses. The floodway has divided our municipality
19 in half. This has increased extra expense and
20 inconvenience to our residents. The twinning of
21 PTH 15 will help but will not alleviate all the
22 issues. Currently if there are emergencies on
23 this side of the floodway, the emergency vehicles
24 have only limited access, resulting in the
25 doubling or tripling of time to get there. My own
01723
1 residence is seven miles from Oakbank, but because
2 of limited access to our area it takes almost a
3 half hour to get there. This has increased our
4 potential for losses in the event of emergencies.
5 The fact that we are more than eight miles from
6 the fire hall has resulted in increased insurance
7 rates for those inside the floodway. This is an
8 extra cost that the residents have to bear. The
9 industrial area owners are even worse, they have
10 to pay exorbitant fire insurance costs.
11 Our children, our four and five year
12 olds now have to travel excessive periods of time
13 on the school bus to get to schools in either
14 Dugald or Oakbank. The length of time is having
15 to going around the floodway. I don't think our
16 children should have to pay the price for
17 protecting the citizens of Winnipeg for flood
18 control. The Education Minister at one of our
19 functions stated that he didn't want to see
20 children traveling more than half an hour on
21 school buses. In our area, because of the
22 floodway, it certainly takes a lot longer than
23 that.
24 The rest of the presentation that I
25 have, and I will leave a copy with the Commission,
01724
1 just has a number of questions which I would have
2 liked to have asked, but I'm hoping that the CEC
3 will try and find answers to a number of the
4 questions. I'm going to go through a few of them,
5 it will take me probably about two minutes.
6 THE CHAIRMAN: What you have left
7 though.
8 MR. BODNARUK: Some of it deals with
9 the Prairie Grove area again, and it deals with
10 Bob Millman's presentation to the Commission. It
11 states that under conditions of low diversion
12 flows and high floodway flows, the current
13 structure, there would be flooding -- and with the
14 current structure there would be flooding of the
15 area east of Grande Pointe. I would like to find
16 out from the Floodway Authority, how far east and
17 south the flooding will occur.
18 I asked Doug McNeil previously about
19 possibly gating the culverts coming through
20 Prairie Grove Road, and he had stated because of
21 possible coincident peaks that gates would prevent
22 water from leaving the upstream of the culverts.
23 But later in the hearing he stated that the water
24 from the area leaves before the peaks arrive.
25 Does that mean that gating is a possibly?
01725
1 How will the MFA protect the area to
2 the south and the east from getting flooded? We
3 have wells in the area west of the floodway, it is
4 in a prime zone for contamination. There has been
5 no monitoring. We have been assured that there
6 will be, but to me that would be a primary area
7 where the monitoring well should be set up in the
8 first place. I'm directly across from the Oasis.
9 When we built our house there was pockets of silt
10 that extended seven to ten feet down, so if there
11 is pockets of the silt where my house is, the
12 outside drain of the floodway is no more than
13 100 feet away from my house. So we are very close
14 proximity, the soil conditions are not homogenous,
15 there is a wide variation. And I believe that the
16 contamination can get into it because of those
17 pockets of silt.
18 A couple of questions -- did you know
19 that when the existing floodway was built, when
20 equipment broke down, construction companies just
21 buried parts within the floodway right-of-way?
22 And I wonder whether the MFA has a record of where
23 these pits are, and will that affect our water
24 quality? The preferred method of getting rid of
25 garbage by Conservation in the past has been, and
01726
1 that includes everything, shingles, fridges, you
2 name it, was to dig holes and bury it right in the
3 banks. For somebody who is supposed to be with
4 the Conservation Department, it seems like it is
5 not the proper practice to be doing.
6 The outside drains are poorly
7 maintained, and is there any consideration for
8 drop structures on the inside of the floodway?
9 One last thing, I wonder whether or
10 not we can do a 3D representation of the wells
11 drilled catalogue, in accordance to the year
12 drilled, showing depths and flow to see if there
13 is any change from prior to the floodway being
14 built to the current date. There should be no
15 difference or very little difference in the well
16 depths and flows over the years if the floodway
17 hasn't impacted the aquifers. You should be able
18 to arrive at a positive correlation if there has
19 been any impact from the floodway. I have seen it
20 done in athe presentation in Fargo, and it
21 certainly is impressive. And you can correlate
22 according to dates, and it would give some
23 valuable information.
24 Lastly, or two more things. One is
25 that should not any mitigation concerns be
01727
1 referred to an independent tribunal, not a
2 Provincial Government agency or the MFA?
3 And I noticed in one of the KGS
4 reports that the east bank of the floodway north
5 of Birds Hill is going to be used as a spoil berm.
6 Does that mean that all of the trees from Park and
7 Kirkness Road are going to be removed, and should
8 that not be a concern?
9 There is a lot more questions, but I
10 will leave it with you, and hopefully if you get a
11 chance to read them, and I hope that they are
12 important enough that you will some answers to
13 them.
14 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you,
15 Mr. Bodnaruk, we will certainly read them. Mr.
16 Znamirowski.
17 MR. ZNAMIROWSKI: I did have something
18 that I gave to Ms. Johnson on diskette, if that
19 could be put up.
20 MS. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, while we
21 are waiting I can read exhibits into the record.
22 Number 62, a letter from Mr. Galoway. Number 63
23 will be Mr. Grant's presentation, and number 64 is
24 Mr. Bodnaruk's presentation.
25
01728
1 (EXHIBIT 62: Letter from Mr. Galoway)
2
3 (EXHIBIT 63: Mr. Grant's presentation
4 to CEC)
5
6 (EXHIBIT 64: Mr. Bodnaruk's
7 presentation to CEC)
8 THE CHAIRMAN: Cathy, could you swear
9 him.
10
11 (RANDY ZNAMIROWSKI: SWORN)
12
13 MR. ZNAMIROWSKI: First of all, I
14 would like to thank the Floodway Expansion
15 Authority and the Clean Environment Commission for
16 allowing me to speak on this. And the very first
17 thing and the most important thing that I would
18 like to talk about is not what I have a
19 presentation on here, it is regarding something
20 that -- I believe a very good gentleman has spoken
21 about this before, by the name of Mr. Bob
22 Galoway -- and that's I would like to the thank
23 the Floodway Expansion Authority with going
24 through with the very bold and very smart road of
25 twinning the highway 15 bridge, and we certainly
01729
1 hope that they will go through with that, and that
2 the bridge will go much farther than, the highway
3 will go farther than 207.
4 What has happened during the past
5 couple of winters, I guess, is that basically the
6 Highways Department has come up with an idea to
7 twin Garven Road which was really -- or actually
8 to widen Garven Road, which was really not met
9 with much fanfare by anybody around. And in fact,
10 getting to know a number of people in here, like I
11 said, Mr. Galoway, and obviously our fine reeve
12 and council, and the Garven Road committee, which
13 was all started by Mr. Frank Vinci got things
14 going. And basically we had over 1500 people sign
15 a petition in about 10 days. And just a handful
16 of locations, Oakbank, Dugald and Anola, basically
17 opposing the work to be done on Garven, and
18 wanting the work to be done that has been wanting
19 to be done for 25 plus years on twinning highway
20 15 and the bridge.
21 I mean, I think that's a very
22 significant amount of people, considering the
23 population of the RM of Springfield is only about
24 12,000. And obviously a number of other people
25 that we have notices and have talked to us in the
01730
1 months gone by in Steinbach, Ste. Anne,
2 Beausejour, et cetera, all thought that is the
3 logical highway to be twinned, and we wish all
4 money to be diverted towards that because we have
5 scarce tax dollars, and that is the number one
6 thing that I wanted to talk about.
7 THE CHAIRMAN: Unfortunately we have
8 no control over the Highway Department.
9 MR. ZNAMIROWSKI: I know, but I just
10 wanted to thank, like I said, Mr. Gilroy, Mr.
11 Thomson and Mr. McNeil for their wonderful
12 foresight of twinning the bridge.
13 What I would like to talk about here
14 is regarding the recreational opportunities that
15 have been asked by the floodway, and of course it
16 is an extremely minor concern compared to what
17 everything else had done. I would like to
18 basically predicate this on Mr. Bodnaruk's
19 presentation. I think he has some extremely
20 serious concerns, and I think all of those have to
21 be addressed and obviously resolved to his
22 satisfaction. And I would highly recommend that
23 Mr. Bodnaruk and his fellow residents near the
24 floodway be invited to participate in all of the
25 recreational opportunity meetings that come forth
01731
1 and address all of his concerns.
2 I believe that I have what I think is
3 an all encompassing view here, a vision of the
4 floodway which would allow motorized and
5 non-motorized users to peacefully co-exist, and it
6 has certain extensive economic spin-offs and is
7 self-sustaining. It should address all six of the
8 floodway working principles, being compatibility
9 with the primary purpose of the floodway, minimal
10 ongoing maintenance and cost to taxpayers,
11 stakeholder participation and community support,
12 maximizing the benefit to rural and Aboriginal
13 communities, the complete the existing Red River
14 facilities and initiatives, complement them, and
15 obviously environmental stewardship.
16 Basically, what I am proposing is
17 splitting the floodway basically in its natural
18 state right now, being the east bank and the west
19 bank. The east bank I think would be a golden
20 opportunity. It is actually utilized now for
21 snowmobile trails in the winter, and ATV or dirt
22 biking or mountain biking, et cetera, in the
23 summer. It is by far the less populated. There
24 is fewer residents, homeowners, and on the surface
25 it is more rural farmland.
01732
1 I think we could respect the west
2 bank homeowners' privacy, the security from
3 vandalism and increased traffic concerns that
4 people have, and you would want to keep the
5 motorized off of that bank.
6 On the west bank, where all of the
7 population is closer to Winnipeg I think would be
8 more environmentally friendly things in there,
9 being bicycle trails, horse, walking trails,
10 hiking trails, cross country ski, et cetera. It
11 is obviously the more populated area, closer to
12 Winnipeg, more homes, et cetera.
13 I apologize, I didn't have time to put
14 this into PowerPoint or anything, I just did this
15 during lunch today.
16 I think the trails, they actually
17 could be running the entire length of the
18 floodway, a number of people are using that
19 already. They would be on top of the banks but
20 venture into the channel for elevation changes and
21 variety. They could be hilly with slight
22 elevation changes from like three to 30 feet to
23 enhance the experience and gently veer from side
24 to side for people. The above design I think
25 would enhance the experience, increase the usage,
01733
1 increase tourism, reduce speeds and obviously
2 increase safety.
3 Three rows of trees I thought would be
4 an excellent way to run, to actually plant on the
5 east side and all of the sides. On the far east
6 side there could be fast growing trees such as
7 willows, in the middle we could have something
8 like the pine trees, and on the western side some
9 spruce trees. I think that way we would get a lot
10 of protection. The trees I believe would make a
11 natural barrier between the one way trails. They
12 will enhance bank stability and reduce erosion.
13 They could provide better air quality for the
14 citizens of Winnipeg. They could enhance and
15 restore the natural beauty in the area. They
16 could trap snow for better trails, make it a safer
17 trail, a longer season, less damage to the
18 equipment on the trail, and obviously provide a
19 noise and sight barrier for users and residents,
20 which is obviously important. They can also be
21 used for ecological, scientific research, et
22 cetera.
23 I think that the two one way trails on
24 the east bank should be separated by trees. We
25 need to do that to increase safety, save lives. I
01734
1 mean, the floodway has been used already by
2 snowmobilers and there has been a couple of people
3 who lost their lives because there was no safe
4 one-way trail on there. People are riding on
5 there anyway and it is a natural link. And there
6 is a number of local clubs, five of them, that
7 could actually be utilized to pool their
8 resources, being the Springfield Pathfinders here
9 in our community, Spring Hill Trail Blazers, in
10 neighbouring communities, the Voyageur Trail
11 Groomers Association, Ste. Anne Snow Raiders and
12 of course the Cross-country Snow Drifters.
13 Snomobiling is a billion dollar
14 industry in Manitoba with many spinoffs. I mean,
15 there is dealers, garages, restaurants, hotels, et
16 cetera. It is the fastest growing winter sport
17 and recreation activity. It is a sport that
18 appeals to all groups and increases with people's
19 age, from extreme sports, obviously, to casual
20 family to nature lovers. It appeals to all income
21 levels, but the average sledder now is usually
22 more affluent and family oriented. And
23 snowmobilers are extreme nature lovers and respect
24 the environment. It is the fastest growing winter
25 tourism activity. Many sledders travel over
01735
1 300 miles a day. It is part of our Canadian
2 culture, our Manitoba culture. We invented it, we
3 are better known for the Canadian Power Toboggan
4 World Championship, the oldest snowmobile race in
5 the world, 43 years old. There is also a
6 snowmobile heritage museum here, one of the first
7 snowmobiles ever built, in Beausejour. And all of
8 these facts could be posted on large signs in the
9 floodway and trails, et cetera.
10 Ithe think if we make some staging
11 areas, it would be parking lots for vehicles and
12 trailers off major highways, for instance, the
13 highways 15, 59 north, and highway 1, this will
14 promote tourism for all Manitoba to all the
15 10,000 miles of trails that we already have and
16 they are all interconnected.
17 The main day ride, people go from the
18 floodway and they go to Falcon Lake, Sandilands,
19 Whiteshell, Grand Beach, or they go to the
20 Interlake, being Gimli and Heckla Island, and also
21 the Pembina Valley. The missing link, obviously,
22 for this is really the floodway. And Snow Man or
23 the snowmobiles of Manitoba trail map is the
24 floodway. It is desperately needed to connect to
25 several other trails. As Snow Man trails are all
01736
1 self-funded by the sale of snow passes, this
2 proposal would be self-sufficient after the
3 initial start-up, as it would be taken over by
4 existing clubs or new trail grooming associations.
5 The only capital requirement would be
6 the start-up to plant the trees, do the
7 landscaping, the hills, et cetera, the trees, and
8 we know we are moving the dirt already. A warm-up
9 shelter would be nice, and obviously the trail and
10 staging and signing, and perhaps a nice snowmobile
11 map to promote this.
12 All these costs will be extremely
13 insignificant but they will produce hundreds of
14 times their value in spinoff benefits for tourism
15 and recreation opportunities. I think this would
16 provide a positive promotion for the floodway for
17 the province, something to stand for more than
18 flood protection, obviously the main idea of the
19 floodway. And that concludes my presentation.
20 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.
21 We have one more person who we had
22 confirmed last week would be on tonight, but
23 wasn't shown on our list. That's Mr. Norman
24 Traverse. Mr. Traverse, is he still here?
25 Mr. Traverse, I will have the commission secretary
01737
1 swear you in.
2
3 (NORMAN TRAVERSE: SWORN)
4
5 THE CHAIRMAN: You may proceed.
6 MR. TRAVERSE: As I was saying, first
7 of all I want to thank the Commission for giving
8 me this opportunity. And I traveled many miles
9 tonight, and I'm just thankful to be here this
10 evening.
11 As I was saying, my name is Norman
12 Traverse of Lake St. Martin First Nations. I was
13 Chief of Lake St. Martin First Nation a few years
14 back, and I'm very familiar with the effects of
15 flooding on my community.
16 You may ask, what does flooding so far
17 away have to do with the concerns of this group?
18 Well, the answer is, a great deal. Let me
19 explain. In the early 1970s, the Province of
20 Manitoba began operation of the water control
21 structure which regulates the water flow between
22 Lake Manitoba, through the Fairford River into
23 Lake St. Martin, and then into Lake Winnipeg.
24 I want to, in addition I want to make
25 a comment with this first paragraph. Before they
01738
1 built that water control structure there was a
2 natural flow, and then they expanded that flow,
3 doubled that flow, which then of course goes right
4 into Fairford, right into Lake St. Martin. And
5 then before this control structure was built, I
6 had been asking for an environmental social impact
7 study regarding Lake St. Martin. And to date I
8 haven't been satisfied.
9 They went ahead and build this control
10 structure without giving any consideration to the
11 people downstream. And as a result of that we
12 suffered. We lived in duress the last 40 years.
13 Whenever the province wants to lower
14 water in Lake Manitoba, it dumps that water into
15 Lake St. Martin, which has a very small outlet.
16 The water rises, covers our roads, surrounds our
17 houses, causes our septic tanks to pop out of the
18 ground like corks, contaminate our wells, our
19 children get sick, our elders. Permanent damage
20 is caused. Our houses rot at the foundation. The
21 soil of our reserve is super saturated with water.
22 It is now there permanently, even when there is no
23 flood. Our hay fields have been permanently
24 destroyed, converted into marsh land. Our once
25 prosperous cattle industry has been destroyed.
01739
1 What does that have to do with the
2 Winnipeg floodway? Well, when Winnipeg gets
3 concerned about too much water, it cuts down the
4 flow of water from the Assiniboine River by
5 operating the Portage diversion. This diverts
6 water into Lake Manitoba, and that water too goes
7 through the Fairford control structure. This
8 causes flooding in Lake St. Martin. It floods our
9 homes and roads and makes our people sick.
10 It is very interesting to compare the
11 way in which flooding homes of non-native people
12 in Winnipeg is handled compared to the flooding of
13 Indian homes. I see where a few homeowners
14 received millions of dollars as compensation for
15 flooding. At Lake St. Martin community nearly 200
16 homes have been severely damaged by flooding, and
17 we didn't receive one penny of compensation.
18 These homes should be condemned, but our people
19 continue to live in them because we have no
20 choice.
21 When I was Chief we took the Province
22 of Manitoba to court for damages to our homes and
23 lands. Instead of being concerned, having
24 hearings like you have here today, negotiating a
25 settlement, being decent about it, the Province of
01740
1 Manitoba fought us tooth and nail, putting us into
2 bankruptcy with legal costs.
3 When I read in the newspapers about
4 the Winnipeg floodway being good for all the
5 people of Manitoba, I think of my people at Lake
6 St. Martin reserve, and the unfair and the racist
7 manner in which we have been treated. The
8 floodway may be good for other people, but when I
9 see the waters rising around the homes on our
10 reserve, I know it is not good for us.
11 I have delivered my presentation. I
12 would have more, but I'm just thankful to have
13 made my presentation.
14 Thank you for hearing my words, the
15 Commission. Maybe there is something that you can
16 do to help. Thank you very much.
17 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much,
18 Mr. Traverse.
19 We have one person who wanted to make
20 a presentation if we had time, we still have a few
21 minutes. Mr. Bruce Allen, you have ten minutes.
22
23 (BRUCE ALLEN SWORN)
24
25 MR. ALLEN: First of all, thanks for
01741
1 on short notice allowing me this opportunity. I
2 would like to talk primarily about ice jamming
3 north of the floodway.
4 I guess I sat through a lot of public
5 meetings last fall, and heard a lot of my
6 neighbors talk about their experiences and
7 correlations between observances of ice jamming
8 and the operation of the floodway. It seemed to
9 me that there was a connection there, it was
10 pretty coincidental that these things occurred
11 almost simultaneously.
12 At one of the meetings I heard a
13 representative from the Floodway Authority get up
14 and say, with absolute conviction, that there was
15 absolutely zero impact between operation of the
16 floodway and subsequent ice jamming events. I
17 guess that was a wake-up call to me, because
18 absolutely zero, I mean, how can anyone be that
19 confident, particularly a professional individual?
20 The statement seemed to be political, it seemed to
21 be opportunistic, they effectively absolved
22 themselves of any responsibility with that
23 statement, and it is pretty hard to refute a
24 statement such as that.
25 So, I took some time and thought about
01742
1 it, and I came up with a few links, I think that
2 were defendable, based on common sense, if not
3 absolute theory. I'm an engineer by profession.
4 I deal in structures. Hydrology isn't my
5 expertise. But when I looked at it I thought
6 there was linkages, I thought I could defend them.
7 I wrote these up, I put them in a letter to the
8 editor initially, and at one of the subsequent
9 hearings I submitted a report and asked for a
10 review of the observations, and if I was wrong,
11 show me where I was wrong, or conversely show me
12 you were right.
13 I deal in structures as a engineer,
14 but there are a few absolutes in my business.
15 When we are dealing with materials such as steel
16 and concrete, they are a pretty well known
17 commodity, but the unknown when it comes to doing
18 design is the environmental factors. Just how
19 much snow will there be in a given year, how much
20 ice will build up, how hard will the wind blow?
21 History will provide us some examples and these
22 are used in design work. We draw from history,
23 but then we apply factors of safety to the designs
24 to account for the unknown. And again, a lot of
25 it is the variability associated with
01743
1 environmental loading.
2 So with that as a background, what I
3 would like to really talk about then, is to try
4 and get a point across that I tried to make
5 before, but I think I failed because of the
6 technical nature that I presented. So I would
7 like to draw a couple of observations here.
8 These are not my numbers, I took them
9 from the proceedings that happened here. And so
10 again, if these are wrong, I think even if they
11 are wrong, the trends demonstrate my point. But
12 the other day here it was said that there was six
13 flooding events in 115 years prior to the floodway
14 being built, six in 115, that's about 5 percent.
15 Since the floodway was built, there has been six
16 events in 38 years. That adds up to about
17 16 percent, so almost a three-fold increase.
18 Now, how coincidental is that? I
19 think at the time, and again correct me if I'm
20 wrong, but I think at the time the statement was
21 made that it has been abnormally wet years since
22 the floodway was built, and that this would
23 explain that away. Certainly wetness is one of
24 the variables at play here, but there is far more
25 variables at play here.
01744
1 Just a few of the variables, there is
2 ice thickness, there is the structure of the ice,
3 how the ice is anchored to the shore at any one
4 point in time, snow cover, water depth, water
5 flow, upstream conditions, downstream conditions,
6 there is a host of environmental factors that come
7 into play, how much rain, how much snow, how much
8 sun, the temperatures that are being observed.
9 Since the conditions are constantly changing,
10 there is a time element involved. And there is
11 the effect of the river channel itself which
12 varies as you move along it. So there is, some
13 points there will be more probability than other
14 points, and it is the probabilities that I wanted
15 to get down.
16 So during 115 years there were six
17 naturally occurring events -- again, your numbers,
18 or numbers that came out of this proceeding.
19 Since most naturally occurring events can be
20 plotted on a curve, they don't just spike up all
21 of a sudden, but the combination of elements that
22 lead to those events in any given year would be a
23 probability associated with them. So there had to
24 be years during that period where conditions,
25 natural conditions would be a very high
01745
1 probability, almost reaching the threshold of a
2 flood event or an ice jamming event, but the ice
3 jamming event didn't occur, the conditions were
4 not quite right, almost, but not quite.
5 So then the floodway was built,
6 man-made intervention in a naturally occurring
7 environment, a device that by the Floodway
8 Authority's own admission impacts one of the very
9 key variables, that being water flow. By their
10 own admission, they artificially increase the flow
11 of water at an extremely critical and vulnerable
12 point.
13 And since the floodway was built, the
14 number of ice jamming occurrences have increased
15 by a factor of over three times. I don't think
16 this is a coincidence.
17 Now, the FA and their consultants have
18 suggested that their studies and computer models
19 prove that the increase in water flow has no
20 impact on ice jamming events. The increased water
21 flow has been a slug, a slug of water, and that
22 this slug apparently has absolutely zero impacts.
23 Now, I use computer models in my line
24 of work. They are an excellent tool and they
25 provide insight into any number of things.
01746
1 However, they are based on theory and assumptions.
2 Any number of variables are quite often assumed
3 away, because it gets too complex and unmanageable
4 to try to account for everything.
5 I would suggest that the variables
6 involved with the Red River and trying to model
7 that are hopelessly complex. I would suggest that
8 attempting to model and predict all of the
9 naturally occurring variables that occur during a
10 spring runoff period is far more analogous to
11 predicting the weather than it is to designing a
12 building. And as pointed out earlier, even when I
13 am designing a building, there is few absolutes.
14 And we all know how accurately the weather models
15 predict what weather is going to be.
16 The best analogy that I can think of
17 is this; in the year when we have tinder dry
18 conditions in the forest, we all know that you
19 don't go around lighting fires. When conditions
20 are right for a forest fire, when the combination
21 of naturally occurring events align themselves so
22 that the probability of a fire starting is
23 extremely high, you don't want to so much as
24 create a spark for fear of the consequences. By
25 the same token, when conditions on the Red River
01747
1 are ripe for ice jamming, you don't want to shock
2 the system. When the combination of naturally
3 occurring events align themselves such that the
4 probability of an ice jamming event is itself very
5 high, due to none other than the combination of
6 naturally occurring events the unto themselves at
7 that point in time, this is the wrong time to
8 artificially increase one of the primary variables
9 such as water flow. This is the wrong time to
10 send a slug of water through the system. And in
11 the forest fire analogy, this is the spark that
12 you want to avoid.
13 I think this is a more plausible
14 explanation for the three-fold increase since the
15 floodway was built than to simply state we have
16 had wet years. There is a lot more to it than
17 that. In any given year, if you truly understood
18 the process, and if you care to study and
19 understand the variables, you may be able to say
20 that the probabilities of ice jamming are
21 relatively high or low. You might be able to
22 predict with a fair degree of certainty that in a
23 given year, when the probabilities due to
24 naturally occurring events are already low, that
25 you could safely operate the floodway without
01748
1 flooding. However, in a year where the
2 probabilities due to natural occurring events are
3 high, we do not understand the situation enough to
4 make any accurate predictions like the weather.
5 So if the FA, if the Floodway
6 Authority can't tell me with absolute certainty in
7 any given year whether or not we will have an ice
8 jamming event, then by that very nature they have
9 not demonstrated that they know the whole story,
10 that their models aren't as accurate as they would
11 have us believe, that there are too many variables
12 to try to piece together what is happening there.
13 So if they can't tell me in any given
14 year if the floodway is going to ice jam or not,
15 or if the river is going to ice jam north of the
16 floodway, how can they make the statement with
17 absolute certainty that the operation of the
18 floodway itself poses absolutely zero impact? I
19 can't see that.
20 Unfortunately, an expanded floodway
21 brings with it expanded water flows and
22 regrettably the potential for larger slugs of
23 water. If anybody here cares about the flooding
24 potential of ice jams north of the floodway, then
25 this needs to be studied and better understood,
01749
1 and a resolution to the problem of ice jamming
2 determined.
3 I guess my parting comment is this: I
4 can't understand how an individual from the
5 Floodway Authority can get up in front of a public
6 forum and say with absolute conviction that the
7 impact of the floodway on subsequent ice jamming
8 events has absolutely zero impact.
9 Thank you for your time.
10 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.
11 That brings the evening to a conclusion. See you
12 all bright and early tomorrow morning at
13 9:00 o'clock here.
14 MS. JOHNSON: Mr. Chairman, could I
15 enter those last few exhibits, Mr. Arklie's
16 presentation will be exhibit 65, Mr. Znamirowski's
17 presentation will be 66, and Mr. Traverse's is 67.
18 Thank you.
19
20 (EXHIBIT 65: Mr. Arklie's
21 presentation to CEC)
22
23 (EXHIBIT 66: Mr. Znamirowski's
24 presentation to CEC)
25
01750
1 (EXHIBIT 67: Mr. Traverse's
2 presentation to CEC)
3
4 THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you.
5
6 (ADJOURNED AT 9:00 P.M.)
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01751
1 OFFICIAL EXAMINER'S CERTIFICATE
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5 I, CECELIA REID, a duly appointed Official
6 Examiner in the Province of Manitoba, do hereby
7 certify the foregoing pages are a true and correct
8 transcript of my Stenotype notes as taken by me at
9 the time and place hereinbefore stated.
10
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13 ----------------------------
14 Cecelia Reid
15 Official Examiner, Q.B.
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